Monochromatic Outlook

5.67 miles in 54:39 (unof­fi­cial). That’s rough­ly five min­utes longer than I ran the Cable Car Chase in 2004, so the result is slight­ly dis­ap­point­ing. My days of rest to allow my legs to recov­er did­n’t seem to help and I have what seem to be huge knots at the inside base of each calf. I’m going to sched­ule an appoint­ment with my chi­ro­prac­tic and mas­sage prac­ti­tion­er this week to see if there’s any­thing that … Read the rest

Yes, integri­ty is its own reward, but I some­times find myself sur­prised at the ben­e­fits of my attempts at being a more hon­est per­son. I’ve heard it said before, but it’s eas­i­er. I don’t pre­tend to be per­fect­ly hon­est, but I am bet­ter than I used to be. 

It’s eas­i­er for the obvi­ous rea­sons. It takes a lot of effort to main­tain a fab­ri­ca­tion. Some peo­ple are real­ly good at it, but keep­ing track of what I’ve told whom is … Read the rest

My legs were telling me not to go, but did I lis­ten? No. I ratio­nal­ized that since I was tak­ing a short­er route that it would be a nice easy run. My short route, how­ev­er, is my hill route. I end­ed up pun­ish­ing my calves a bit too hard as well as what­ev­er it is that con­nects my hip to my thigh. I def­i­nite­ly need to take it easy for a few days.… Read the rest

Yes­ter­day evening I went back to the gym. I haven’t been in a while for a vari­ety of rea­sons, but I guess most­ly because it’s eas­i­er to just put my shorts on and run if I want a work­out. It was a pret­ty abbre­vi­at­ed vis­it, but I touched a num­ber of bases. I found that while my thumb is still a bit achy from a sprain a few months ago that it can sup­port weight in a num­ber of direc­tions … Read the rest

Actu­al­ly, my plan was for four runs: Mon­day, Tues­day, Thurs­day Fri­day. Instead I ran Mon­day, Wednes­day, Thurs­day, Sat­ur­day. Total miles this week: 17.65. I watched my pace slow as the week went on, so for next week I think I’ll short­en two of the runs and maybe make them hill runs. I can feel my legs wish­ing I had­n’t gone out today, but that’s tem­po­rary. I’m not plan­ning on rac­ing tomor­row, so the vari­a­tion from my planned … Read the rest

http://implicit.harvard.edu/

The Implic­it Asso­ci­a­tion Test mea­sures how easy it is for us to asso­ciate con­cepts to one anoth­er and pro­vides mea­sure­ments for our auto­mat­ic pref­er­ences. The results may be shock­ing as they may reveal the effect of strong cul­tur­al bias­es that the sub­ject is either unaware of or con­scious­ly opposed to.

I think of myself as a pret­ty lib­er­al guy. I believe in egal­i­tar­i­an­ism and I am a firm pro­po­nent of human and civ­il rights with­out regard to skin col­or. … Read the rest

There once was a time when Quark XPress was the gold stan­dard of design soft­ware. The Quark loy­al­ists (and I was one) would­n’t go near a com­pet­ing prod­uct even for a favor­able inter­view in Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Arts. Adobe kept on putting out «Quark Killers» with new fea­tures in Page­Mak­er and then Inde­sign, and even pulled a Microsoft by includ­ing Inde­sign in the Adobe Cre­ative Suite for less mon­ey than the price of Pho­to­shop and Illus­tra­tor togeth­er. Essen­tial­ly they paid their Pho­to­shop … Read the rest

On and off I’ve been read­ing both Stephen Cov­ey’s Sev­en Habits and a book about uncon­scious judg­ments called Blink, writ­ten by Mal­colm Glad­well. Cov­ey’s book cau­tions that one should not expect change with­out hard work and rig­or­ous, hon­est self-appraisal. He specif­i­cal­ly writes that it may be use­ful to read through cov­er to cov­er once to get a basic under­stand­ing of the ideas pre­sent­ed, but that real­ly one can­not read a book to trig­ger change and that any­one wish­ing to … Read the rest

Yeah, navel-gaz­ing. I’m read­ing more from Cov­ey’s Sev­en Habits and he describes this won­der­ful thing we have that ani­mals pre­sum­ably don’t, called self-aware­ness. He says that we are supe­ri­or and have domin­ion over the earth because of this abil­i­ty to observe our thoughts and feel­ings and under­stand our­selves as being sep­a­rate from these thoughts and feelings.

I think that’s impor­tant – believ­ing myself to be my thoughts is a trap I used to fall into. I like the way my … Read the rest