Lazy Is the New Brilliant

Internet comics have been around since the days of Mosaic, but i've always found them to be either not funny or too derivative of print comics. There are a couple out there now though that i really enjoy, namely Diesel Sweeties and Alien Loves Predator. Neither of these could really be translated to print without a loss of essence. Both are consistently funny, and DS gets extra credit for being daily. I also like Boy on a Stick and Slither, although i think this would work fine in print.

I Did It!

Finally. I ran 3:15.42 at this weekend's Arizona Rock'n'Roll marathon, well under the 3:20 i needed to qualify for Boston in my age group. I finally made it to the end before hitting the wall. It makes the 6 day-a-week training seem worthwhile after all.

I flew to Phoenix on Friday morning, and basically sat around on the couch for two days at my mother-in-law's house. I wanted to have some time in Phoenix to get used to the dry weather, although ironically the forecast for Sunday called for rain, the first rain in 3 months. As it turned out Sunday was clear and relatively cool, though with a bit of wind.

I ran with a 3:15 pace group for most of the race, until the pacer dropped off at about 22 miles. We went out a little fast, covering the first half in about 1:36.30, but i felt relaxed and the pace seemed fairly leisurely. As the race went on through the second half, i kept waiting for the fatigue to hit me or for my quads to cramp, etc. But it never happened. When i hit 24 miles at just over 2:58, i knew i was going to make it so i tried to pick up the pace a bit. I ran the 25th mile a bit under 7:30 and i'd hoped to do the 26th faster, but as i turned the corner for the last mile i found myself running straight into a headwind. I pushed through that mile, and then made the turn for the last .2 where i could finally move a little faster. Crossing the finish line at a good pace, passing people on the way, coming in at your goal time is amazingly satisfying.

I felt strangely happy all day yesterday after the race. Or maybe happily strange. I'm not sure. It wasn't happiness that derives from contentment or from pleasure or from being entertained, but happiness it was. I know that objectively 3:15 is not a great time, but i still felt so good about reaching it. I also know that, while many friends and family members are happy for me, the accomplishment means very little to anyone but myself (for example, my "celebration" upon returning home was getting to take Henry and two of his friends to see Hoodwinked). Nonetheless, i still feel happy. I suppose that since i needed a few tries to make it, and that i had to commit myself further and further to the training to succeed makes it seem more significant to me. I'm an exceptionally fortunate person so i have numerous reasons to be happy, but i've had relatively few experiences in my life of achieving something that wasn't fairly easy for me.

Intelligence

Both of my kids are in their school district's "gifted" program, a fact about which i'm somewhat reluctantly proud. I say reluctantly because, while i think my kids are both very bright, i'm not sure if there's evidence to support a concept of "giftedness". Like most gifted programs, a large part of the qualifying standard is a traditional IQ test. Although i tend to think that intelligence is a more-or-less quantitative property; i'm not sure that IQ tests measure much beyond the ability to take IQ tests. Some of this i derive from the book "The Making of Intelligence" by Ken Richardson, an interesting if slightly dry treatment of many of the currently popular notions of intelligence. It's also a good counterpoint to Steven Pinker's book The Blank Slate, which i found to be a very good book even if i don't agree with some of it.

I lack the motivation to go deeply into either Richardson's or Pinker's views on intelligence. The overriding message i've gleaned from reading these and other books is this: nobody really understands how the brain works. Science probably understands the brain better today than it did a century ago, but the level of understanding is similar to when early physicians came to the realization that emotions do not originate in the heart. The brain is a uniquely difficult thing to study, since to study it you must work within its own limitations. The current methods of studying the brain involve some interesting stuff, from various psychological tests to medical imaging to computer modeling; but there's really no way to know what's happening in the brain while it's happening without relying on feedback from the brain of the person to whom it's happening. It's an almost Heisenbergian dilemma.

Intelligence in particular is a tricky concept. There's endless debate over how "culturally biased" IQ tests are, although i think it's a one-sided debate. The fundamental desire to measure intelligence in the first place is a cultural bias; based on the (in my opinion) mistaken notion that intelligence (in the analytical, puzzling-solving sense of IQ tests) is a measure of a person's value to society. I've always admired "smart" people, like scientists and engineers who seem to string together one brilliant insight after another (e.g., Linus Pauling or John Bardeen). I'm not quite sure what these people have that others don't; i don't know if their apparent brilliance is really a function of better neurons, or better genes, or if they simply lived in environments that motivated them to work harder and suffer more frustration than their peers. But can their contributions to society be rated more significant than those of a great humanitarian or diplomat or soldier? Or even a good parent or an someone who's especially kind or caring? I'm not sure how much stock i place in the currently trendy concept of "emotional intelligence", but i've lived long enough to see how one person with average intelligence but exceptional charisma can get more accomplished than a roomful of brainiacs. If that's not a "gift", then i'm not sure what is.

Often when i read critiques of intelligence measures and IQ, my skeptic sensors go off and i wonder if the writer isn't just somebody who tested badly and now wants to rationalize why it doesn't matter (except for Stephen Jay Gould whose "Mismeasure of Man" was an excellent book and who was obviously "intelligent", whatever that means). My disclaimer on this would go something like this: i've consistently scored around what i call the "Salieri" score, that is, just smart enough to identify the people who are a lot smarter. Maybe this explains why i view IQ measures with a jaundiced eye, maybe it doesn't.

Christmas Redux

I spent the Christmas holiday in Phoenix this year, at my mother-in-law's house. The weather was unusually warm, even for Phoenix, with highs near 80. We drove to Phoenix on Friday morning (the 23rd) and drove back yesterday (the 27th).

It was a nice break. I ran, a lot. I did runs of 10, 20, 5, and 8 miles, all at around marathon pace (about 7.20 miles). It felt really good, although i have to factor in that it was on very flat terrain compared to what i'm used to. I was especially happy with getting in 20 miles at race pace, especially the day after a moderately hard 10 miles. I also managed to knock off another couple-hundred pages of Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, from which i'd taken a break after the invasion of Poland. Also went to see King Kong, which i found slightly disappointing. It's too long, and despite vastly better effects and environments it lacks some of the mystery of the original (the Jeff Bridges version, as Bill Simmons would say, never happened).

On Monday i drove the marathon route. It's definitely flat, though not especially attractive. It's a point-to-point route that starts near downtown and ends up at Sun Devil stadium in Tempe. I think there must be some sort of marathon route planning guide that dictates miles 22-24 must go through an industrial park. Never fails.

This was probably the most unusual Christmas i've had since 1996, when i was in the Philippines. We got up and opened presents as usual, but then i went out and ran 20 miles. For Christmas dinner we went to my sister-in-law's house, and though we had traditional Christmas fare, we also sat in her yard drinking sangria in the 70+ degree weather. It was lovely, but not exactly Irving Berlin. My boys are understandably (i think) a bit puzzled by Christmas, since the standard Christmas imagery (snow, sleigh-rides, caroling, chestnuts roating on open fires, jack frost, etc.) is mostly foreign to them. Though they've been sufficiently indoctrinated in the religious significance of the season, it's mostly about the loot for them. I hope that they have some special memories of Christmas when they grow up, but it's hard to imagine that it'll have the same resonance for them that it had for me.

42

Or as i like to think of it, twenty-one twice. I'm not quite sure if that's old yet.

I did my annual birthday bike ride today. I didn't want to affect my marathon training too much so i did a relatively low-key ride of about 60 miles. I went over to the coast via the Highway 56 bike path, went up the Torrey Pines hill into La Jolla, and then i climbed up Mount Soledad. I went up Soledad on Via Capri, which as it turns out is way steep. In fact, i don't think i've ever climbed anything that was so consistently steep. At several points i wasn't sure if i could keep moving forward, even though i was in the lowest gear and standing on the pedals. Must be over 10% grade.

I did the ride solo again this year. All of my biking friends were either out of town or couldn't get a Thursday off work. I haven't ridden alone for a while, so it was kind of nice. Although it's a little lonely at times, you don't have to worry about matching anyone else's pace or following a certain route.

I'm not certain which year i started this tradition, but i think this might have been my 14th year. I think that Dec. 1991 was my first ride, because i was still working at the supercomputer center in San Diego. I think that the 2nd year i wasn't at the center anymore, and i left there in April of 1992. The only year i missed was 1996, because i was in the Philippines.

O'Brian Quote

I've mentioned here before my fondness for the late Patrick O'Brian's sea-faring novels. I came across this quote in the first of the Aubrey/Maturin series (Master and Commander). I think it should be etched on the inside of the eyelids of every commentator on Fox news:

...patriotism is a word; and one that generally comes to mean either 'my country, right or wrong', which is infamous, or 'my country is always right', which is imbecile.

Hyperphagia

This morning i got up at 4am, drove to Coronado Island (yes, you can drive to an island), and ran 20 miles, from Tidelands park down the Silver Strand and back. It was dark for the first half of the run, but for some strange reason i enjoyed that. My craving for solitude has reached such a drastic point that i not only prefer being alone, i prefer being invisible.

I've been running so much lately (for me) that i've apparently achieved some sort of metabolic transformation where i literally cannot get enough to eat. I am constantly hungry. I read in book recently that birds go through a phase prior to migration called hyperphagia, which as you can guess just means that they eat a lot more than normal. I figure i'm eating 3500-4000 calories/day and yet i'm never really full. I only stop eating out of a vague sense of embarrasment. I can't really say that i'm eating well. Though i try to get a fair amount of fruits, vegetables, and protein; i also get a fair amount of peanut M+Ms and pop tarts (i really like the non-frosted strawberry poptarts).

This was another 30 mile weekend. I did 10 yesterday between games at my boys All-Star soccer tournament. My legs feel better than i would expect. The 20-milers used to really wipe me out, but now they're fairly routine. I'm not sure if this is simply a matter of better conditioning, or if there's some adjustment that your musculo-skeletal system takes years to make.

Youth Culture Killed My Blog

Well, not exactly. But it's been a hectic month. Both of my boys are playing on their respective soccer All-Star teams in addition to the regular schedule, so they've been playing and practicing almost daily. Unfortunately, they didn't fare well in their first tournament, but there's another in a couple of weeks. Win or lose, it's a joy to watch them play- they move with such grace and they've both evolved into pretty good players.

Although i've been reasonably busy at work, i feel as if i'm spending most of my time (when i'm not at a soccer practice) running. I did my first 30-mile weekend this past Sat/Sun (10 miles on Saturday, 20 on Sunday). This last week was the peak of my mileage for this training cycle. In a span of 8 days i ran over 80 miles. I've still got two more 20-milers to do in the coming weeks, but my weekly mileage never exceeds 60 miles again.

The Thanksgiving holiday was nice. Thanksgiving is now my favorite holiday, probably because it revolves around eating. When i was a kid the heavy marketing of Christmas didn't start until after Thanksgiving, but now it starts around Labor Day so Thanksgiving seems neglected. I like that. You get a couple of days off work, you get to feast with impunity, and you don't feel like you're being barraged with media messages about how you must celebrate the holiday in order to be happy. Seriously. I've seen commercials for magazines and television shows that instruct a person how to celebrate Christmas. People need help with this? I think this kind of crap was probably a much better reason to send Martha Stewart to prison than whatever it was she went to prison for.

Saw the new Harry Potter movie. It's a bit scary, but it should be given the subject matter. My only minor complaint (which applies to the last movie also) is that i don't like the new Dumbledore as much (i read somewhere that "dumbledore" is an old english word for "bumblebee"). Richard Harris had the perfect temperament and physicality to play somebody who is both old/wise and a serious badass. The new guy is a little too Yoda-esque for my taste.

We've been doing work on the house. I had the family room painted, and the pool replastered and i'm putting new sod in the back yard. It's amazing how much effort goes into simply arranging to have other people come do work for you. I get the feeling though that the construction boom is abating, because contractors will actually return my phone calls now.

Can you believe it's almost December? Damn, where does all the time go?

Star Trek Syndrome

On Star Trek, especially the original show, any new culture that the Enterprise encountered would be suprisingly monolithic. In some episodes, the new planet would have two conflicting cultures as part of the dramatic tension for that particular plot. This was a necessary expedient for an hour-long show that was trying to make fairly broad points. But it always amused me that even though our own planet has billions of people with hundreds of languages and radically different cultural behaviors, every other planet in the galaxy is monocultural.

This seems to be the way that most news media treat other countries too. Even fairly sophisticated news outlets, like NPR or The Economist, treat foreign cultures (think Iraq, Iran, China) as if the entire population has a single, collective set of opinions. For places that get extra attention these days (Iraq) you might get to hear the collective opinions of the major factions within the country (Kurdish Iraq, Sunni Iraq, Shiite Iraq). In contrast, we know that political opinions can differ widely within a given family; and within a neighborhood opinions can vary so radically that were we the subject of news analysis a civil war would be considered imminent.

I know that even with the best intentions the news media can't really provide a realistic picture of political and cultural variation; and i can know intellectually that they are applying a sort of statistical simplification much like the red state/blue state nonsense applied to our own country. But i wonder if in the end this sort of coverage is just neutral or if it's harmful. For example, it's possible for both right and left to use this sort of coverage to support their own viewpoint (think of the times you've heard a sentence start with "The Iraqi people"). More generally, i think it's just dehumanizing. It completely collapses the scope and breadth of ancient, complex, and varied cultures, which i think makes it easier for Western cultures (or at least the US) to dismiss the other cultures as small and insignificant; as if we were dealing with some isolated, anachronistic tribe.

Training Blues

I've been following a more rigorous training schedule for the marathon i plan to run in January. I run 6 days a week, and it's also more mileage and has weekly speed sessions. I think it's going to help my time considerably once the race comes around, but it's also harder to follow consistently. At the moment i run in the morning, getting up at 5:30 to stretch and trying to hit the road by 6. The time change this past weekend helped-- at least i won't have to run in the dark for a while.

I've been pretty surprised that my legs have held up so far. I used to swear by the idea that i shouldn't run on consecutive days. In the last 4 days i've done runs of 8,17,4,and 8.5 miles. My legs are tired for sure, but not damaged as far as i can tell. I don't think i could have started out at this rate several years ago, but now that i have enough mileage behind me i think i can endure it. I'm still concerned about the coming weeks. There are a couple of weekends where i have to do a 10 mile pace run on Saturday followed by a 20-miler on Sunday. That's gonna hurt.

I've been paying more attention to recovery during this program too, and that seems to help considerably. I make an effort to stretch after running, and i've been adding more protein to my post-hard-day diet. A bit of naproxen sodium on bad days doesn't hurt either. The recovery runs on Monday and Wednesday also work, which really surprises me. I never thought that running on Monday after a long run on Sunday could be a good idea, but it has worked wonders for me.

I have to admit though that this is the first time when i've been looking forward to the end of training. Although i still love the running itself, i am not temperamentally either a morning person or a willing follower of schedules. I can't even begin to imagine what it must be like for a professional runner doing 100+ miles/week and two-a-day training sessions.