Top 5 Countries by number of executions:
I finished last week’s training with a 54.5km bike ride. I was pretty tired starting off, and not very enthusiastic at all, but with the race next weekend it was important to get it done.
I rode from my house up to Centennial Park and did about 10 laps up there in a one off, two on, one off format: one lap nice and easy, two at a reasonably tough pace, then anothe easy one, followed by a stop for a quick stretch, then repeat. The fast laps were reasonably good, with time scattered between 6:25 and 6:30, but I don’t think I’ll be able to ride at that speed for the full 40km in the race… well not if I want to run a decent 10K afterwards!This week is going to be relatively quiet training-wise; normal until Wednesday evening, then Thursday is Australia Day, a public holiday, so I’ll do nothing from then on, apart from maybe a short run on Friday.S: 5km – B: 114.1km – R: 14.1kmCycling home last night was a bit touch and go. I called in to City Bike Depot to get a new tool bag as my current one no longer fits behind saddle since I get set up with aerobars. on leaving there it started raining and while riding up Oxford St. I was tempted to just keep heading home and abandon the laps of the park.
The rain never really got going properly, and had almost stopped by the time I got to the park, so I decided to stick to the original plan and got a little over four laps done on the bars. Nothing too exciting, just cruising around getting used to the new position. I think I could probably do with moving the saddle a bit higher and a bit more forward, so I might play around with it tomorrow. Finished up at home after 33.3km, giving me a total of 59.6km for the day when the morning’s session was included.Today’s swim was good too. Kim is on holidays at the moment so we’re getting decent sessions which is good. This one was nice and cruisey.300 FS200 Catch100 BC2 * { 400 FS on 6:30 (5:47) 200 Pull on 3:30 (2:58) 100 IM on 2:00 (1:33) 2 * 50 FS on 60 (44) }200 FS Swim DownTotal: 2400mBack in September, I wrote to Morris Iemma, the NSW State Premier, telling him I was extremely disappointed that he agreed to the Federal Government’s request for special ‘anti-terrorist’ powers. Today, almost four months later, I got a reply:
Dear M/s RedmondThank you for your recent email regarding counter-terrorism laws. The special meeting of the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) on27 September 2005 unanimously agreed to a range of proposals aimed at strengthening Australia’s security and counter-terrorism arrangements. The Prime Minister, Premiers, and Chief Ministers all agreed that the evolving nature of the terrorist threat, as demonstrated in the London attacks, presented a clear case for Australia’s counter-terrorism laws to be strengthened. COAG also agreed that any new laws must be effective against terrorism and contain appropriate safeguards such as parliamentary and judicial review. The Anti-Terrorism Bill (No.2) 2005 (Cth) gives effect to the agreement reached at COAG, in particular through new laws regarding control orders and preventative detention. It also implements other changes to federal laws (such as those regarding sedition) for which the Commonwealth Government is solely responsible.In accordance with COAG’s agreement, my Government has recently passed the Terrorism (Police Powers) Amendment (Preventative Detention) Bill 2005 to complement the Commonwealth laws regarding preventative detention. In some respects these new laws are unusual. They are not the kinds of laws that democratic governments like to introduce. However the nature of the terrorist threat we now face makes them necessary. My government has sought to strike the right balance, doing all we can to prevent terrorism while at the same time safeguarding individual rights.Yours sincerelyMorris Iemma MPPremier and Treasurer
Revenge may indeed be a dish best served cold, but it would also appear to be a dish best served by men:
In a clever two-phase experiment, the researchers recruited 32 male and female volunteers, as well as four others who were undercover actors hired to play the role of volunteers. In the first part of the experiment, the group played a game of mutual investment in which they had to give money to one of their number. The recipient could decide for himself how much to give back from the profits. He or she could hand back up to triple the investment, but at little reward to himself; or he could hand back little or nothing, thus maximising his own gains but at the investor’s cost. One actor was cast in a generous role, always giving lots of money back to his partners, while another actor was cast as a meany, giving back very little and sometimes nothing at all. Body language by the volunteers, confirmed later in questionnaires, confirmed that they did not like the actors who had cheated on them. “Fair” players, in contrast, were rated as more agreeable, more likeable and, remarkably, more attractive. In the second phase, the same volunteers were each placed in a magnetic resonance imaging scanner, a device which shows blood flows within the brain. The volunteer was then given a demonstration of a mild shock — the equivalent of short bee-sting — and then watched as the actors, standing next to the scanner, got the same painful treatment. When a “fair” actor received a shock, the scanner showed empathy among all the volunteers. In males and females alike, the images showed activation of the anterior insula/fronto-insular cortex (AI/FI) and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). Previous research has showed that these parts of the brain cause the feeling of distress when one sees someone else in pain. When an “unfair” actor got a shock, the AI/FI and ACC lit up again among most female volunteers. Amongst the men, however, these empathic areas showed no increase in activity.
Tuesday was supposed to be a bike day, but it got rained off. I jumped on the indoor trainer with the intention of getting a half hour done before work, but Jacqui was leaving early so it got reduced to 10mins.
Got a good run in last night. It was quite cool which helped. Similar course to last week: home, lap of golf course, back down Newcastle St., up Dover St. and back to the garage. 8.7km all up, in 46:25 with an average HR of 151. Felt good the whole way and could have run a fe more km, but there’s no need to rush these things. I’ve decided that I’m going to train for the Sydney Half Marathon in May so I’ve got plenty of time.Cycled in to work via Centennial this morning. Uneventful.S: 2600m – B: 26.3km – R: 8.7kmAl Gore gives a Martin Luther King Day address outlining his view on what is wrong with American democracy and advocating that something be done about it. It’s a long speech, but well worth a read.
This particular part rings especially true given all the warnings about how our very way of life is under threat from terrorism:Is our Congress today in more danger than were their predecessors when the British army was marching on the Capitol? Is the world more dangerous than when we faced an ideological enemy with tens of thousands of nuclear missiles ready to be launched on a moment’s notice to completely annihilate the country? Is America in more danger now than when we faced worldwide fascism on the march-when the last generation had to fight and win two World Wars simultaneously?It is simply an insult to those who came before us and sacrificed so much on our behalf to imply that we have more to be fearful of than they did. Yet they faithfully protected our freedoms and now it’s up to us to do the very same thing!
An interesting New York Times article (free rego. required) on the fight to raise the minimum wage in the US, a battle being fought at the municipal level. The federal US government is opposed to any sort of raise. The Australian government has just enacted the ‘WorkChoices’ legislation, a misnomer if ever there was one, which will result in lower wages in the long run, and trumpeted the “higher wages = less jobs” canard in the run up to the vote.
This last position was long underpinned by the academic consensus that a rise in the minimum wage hurts employment by interfering with the flow of supply and demand. In simplest terms, most economists accepted that when government forces businesses to pay higher wages, businesses, in turn, hire fewer employees. It is a powerful argument against the minimum wage, since it suggests that private businesses as a group, along with teenagers and low-wage employees, will be penalized by a mandatory raise.The tenor of this debate began to change in the mid-1990’s following some work done by two Princeton economists, David Card (now at the University of California at Berkeley) and Alan B. Krueger… But in 1995, and again in 2000, the two academics effectively shredded the conventional wisdom. Their data demonstrated that a modest increase in wages did not appear to cause any significant harm to employment; in some cases, a rise in the minimum wage even resulted in a slight increase in employment.Sadly, the mentality parodied by Chris Rock when he said that minimum wage means “We’d pay you less if we could” still holds sway.
Got my lunchtime swim in today to start of another week. Felt really good and just cruised through the sets. A decent session too, with some good 400s.
2 * { 100 FS 100 Catch 100 8FS/8BC 100 as 25FS/25BC }3 * { 400 FS on 6:30 (5:53) 200 Pull on 3:30 (2:58) }Total: 2600mToday is Martin Luther King Day and while I’m familiar with the ‘I have a dream’ bit, I have never read, nor listened to, the full speech. Here’s the text, and here’s the audio, so have a listen, and, while doing so, compare his delivery to Bush’s incompetent “Freedom, Democracy, Terror” babbling – poles apart. Somehow I think the world would be a better place had their fates been swapped.