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Working the Last Two
Jun. 28th, 2008 01:03 am
Yesterday's workout:
Time: 25 minutes
Distance: 2.25 miles
Top Speed: 6.2 mph
Calories: 233
Today's workout:
Time: 25 minutes
Distance: 2.27 miles
Top Speed: 6.3 mph
Calories: 234
I ran four times this week! I'm aiming to repeat the feat, but I'll say no more than that for fear of jinxing myself.
Saw Hotel Rwanda, which makes me feel like I have no reason to complain about anything for a good long while. Really, no matter what kind of crappiness is happening in my world, it's very likely not even close to what happened in Rwanda in 1994, or even other parts of Africa right now, or even closer to home. It's incredible to me the amount that some people can endure, the cruelty that we are capable of. What's the most sobering is how we in the West largely ignored what happened there.
I don't mean this to be an indictment, but I think we do have a tendency to turn as blind an eye as possible to hardships elsewhere. There are actually food riots going on in parts of the world right now, even as we grouse about $4 gas. And I think the main reason we try to put this out of our minds is we feel powerless to do anything about it. Really, what could we have done that would have ended the bloodshed in Rwanda fourteen years ago? What can we do to make sure people can afford to feed themselves halfway around the world today?
I really don't know, but after seeing this movie I feel the need to do something. This is not something I can just do nothing about. Any suggestions?
In other news, there's been a pretty neat rabbit trail that's developing in interesting ways. The librarian at Adobe is an avid Lost fan, so she used to come in occasionally and swap theories with me. During one of these geek-gasms she narrowed her eyes and asked me if I were a sociology or psychology major, because I spoke like one. I told her I was interested in sociology, and she told me she had a degree in it! From there we went off about it and she promised she'd loan me some of her old textbooks to read.
Months pass, more Lost theories were hashed out, but she couldn't find the textbooks. Instead she gave me the names of a few sociologists she liked who had written interesting books. One of them was Johnathan Kozol, a name that rang a few bells for some reason or another; I remember shelving a lot of his books at the Dickson Street Bookshop, but for the life of me I couldn't think of the name. I did what I always do when something like that messes with me enough; I looked him up on Wikipedia.
Oddly enough, I never discovered the name of the book, but I *did* discover that he cofounded the Greater Good Institute at UC-Berkeley. What is the Greater Good Institute, you might ask? Well, it's a think tank devoted to applying the principles of social psychology to foster a positive change in the world. It tries to take a scientific look at concepts like gratitude and forgiveness, and looks for ways to apply them to the world at large. It also studies ways these things are already being applied, and how and why they're successful. This is ultimately fascinating.
I'm going to have to snag a few of these magazines, I think.
Time: 25 minutes
Distance: 2.25 miles
Top Speed: 6.2 mph
Calories: 233
Today's workout:
Time: 25 minutes
Distance: 2.27 miles
Top Speed: 6.3 mph
Calories: 234
I ran four times this week! I'm aiming to repeat the feat, but I'll say no more than that for fear of jinxing myself.
Saw Hotel Rwanda, which makes me feel like I have no reason to complain about anything for a good long while. Really, no matter what kind of crappiness is happening in my world, it's very likely not even close to what happened in Rwanda in 1994, or even other parts of Africa right now, or even closer to home. It's incredible to me the amount that some people can endure, the cruelty that we are capable of. What's the most sobering is how we in the West largely ignored what happened there.
I don't mean this to be an indictment, but I think we do have a tendency to turn as blind an eye as possible to hardships elsewhere. There are actually food riots going on in parts of the world right now, even as we grouse about $4 gas. And I think the main reason we try to put this out of our minds is we feel powerless to do anything about it. Really, what could we have done that would have ended the bloodshed in Rwanda fourteen years ago? What can we do to make sure people can afford to feed themselves halfway around the world today?
I really don't know, but after seeing this movie I feel the need to do something. This is not something I can just do nothing about. Any suggestions?
In other news, there's been a pretty neat rabbit trail that's developing in interesting ways. The librarian at Adobe is an avid Lost fan, so she used to come in occasionally and swap theories with me. During one of these geek-gasms she narrowed her eyes and asked me if I were a sociology or psychology major, because I spoke like one. I told her I was interested in sociology, and she told me she had a degree in it! From there we went off about it and she promised she'd loan me some of her old textbooks to read.
Months pass, more Lost theories were hashed out, but she couldn't find the textbooks. Instead she gave me the names of a few sociologists she liked who had written interesting books. One of them was Johnathan Kozol, a name that rang a few bells for some reason or another; I remember shelving a lot of his books at the Dickson Street Bookshop, but for the life of me I couldn't think of the name. I did what I always do when something like that messes with me enough; I looked him up on Wikipedia.
Oddly enough, I never discovered the name of the book, but I *did* discover that he cofounded the Greater Good Institute at UC-Berkeley. What is the Greater Good Institute, you might ask? Well, it's a think tank devoted to applying the principles of social psychology to foster a positive change in the world. It tries to take a scientific look at concepts like gratitude and forgiveness, and looks for ways to apply them to the world at large. It also studies ways these things are already being applied, and how and why they're successful. This is ultimately fascinating.
I'm going to have to snag a few of these magazines, I think.
