<a href-“http://www.emsnetwork.org/artman/publish/article_18337.shtml”>An article written by two Californian paramedics who were trapped in New Orleans describing how inept the relief operation was.

Richard Dawkins and Jerry Coyne demolish intelligent design (ID) in a Guardian article.

Another article, from this weekend’s Sydney Morning Herald gets stuck into ID as well, ending with:

Nelson has said intelligent design should be available in schools because “it’s about choice”. That is postmodern rubbish. Schools are not about choice, they’re about discrimination, about using limited time and resources to teach children what our society regards as most important.

Yesterday’s pool sessions was a bit better than Monday’s. It felt a little easier, though my IM times are about 10secs slower than a few months ago, so there’s a long way to go yet. I’ve decided (after 20 odd years of swimming) to start breathing to my left as much as possible, in order to balance out my stroke a bit and I can feel myself developing the loping style indicative of a strong bias to one side.

2 * {
    150 FS
    2 * 100 Rev. IM
    2 * 50 BC }
12 * 50 FS as {
    4 on 55
    4 on 50
    4 on 45 }
6 * 100 IM on 2:00 (1:37)
2 * 200 FS
Total: 2500m

S: 4500m – B: 15km – R: 1.6km – W: 1 session

An interesting account of the devastation in New Orleans written by a local professor of Middle-East history.

Via Juan Cole

Update: Another interesting article on New Orleans.

Our Education Minister, Brendan Nelson, was quoted in a newspaper article saying that he would have no problem if Intelligent Design was taught in schools alongside evolution. I thought the US was the only place where fundamentalist Christians held sway, but it looks like Australia is heading in that direction too!

Update: FSM Theory should be included too!

Cycled home from work last night and really noticed the fact that I hadn’t been on the bike in a couple of weeks. Decided not to do any laps of the park until I get a couple of weeks under my belt. No point killing myself in the first week and then fading in the second week. As it was I was tired by 10pm anyway.

Jumped out of bed early this morning and hopped on the bus into the gym. After a quick 1.6km warm-up run I hit the weights. Having completed my weights program before heading off to NZ, I’m now doing what’s called a Strength Maintenance program. It’s basically the same exercises as the regular session, with heavy weights, but instead of doing 4 sets of 6 reps, I’m only doing one. Once I can manage 10 reps I’ll up the weight and drop back to 6. I’ll only be doing one session per week, as the general idea is not really to gain strength, but rather not to lose any gains already made. It’s almost like a regular taper, where you can cut out 80% of the work as long as you maintain the intensity.

S: 2000m – B: 15km – R: 1.6km – W: 1 session

There has been a ban on exercise in place since we came back from NZ in order to allow the Irish entrants in Fat Club: This Time It’s Personal (TTIP) to fly home and get organised. The ban expired this morning, so it was time to hop on the bike in to work. Since I had a few ferry trips remaining on my pass, I decided to use them up and cruise the harbour, leaving the cycling until the way home.

It was a beautiful winter’s morning, with a low sun on a glassy harbour, and I couldn’t help thinking what a wonderful way it is to start the morning, so I’m going to do it all the time (well on the three days per week I’m going to cycle) and save the cycling for the evening. I’ll need to add in some laps around Centennial Park on the way home to make up for it, but I reckon it’s worth it. I’ll have to bring the camera along one morning and take a few snaps, to drive home my point and convince any skeptics!

Anyway, it was also time to get back in the pool at lunch-time and that was interesting. Stroke felt good, though I was tired pretty quickly. It will take me two weeks to get back into it, so I pulled the plug after 2km today.

200 FS warm up
4 * {50K/100FS}
400 Pull
300 Choice
8 * 50 FS as {
    2 on 60
    2 on 55
    2 on 50
    2 on 45}
100 swim down
Total: 2000m

S: 2000m

After the usual weight gain while in NZ we’ve decided to attempt another Fat Club. It worked briefly last year, losing 5kg by Christmas, but one thing led to another and I’m now back to where I was at this time last year. The one positive is that at least I’m fitter and stronger.

Looking back on what worked, and what didn’t, over the last year reveals that volume of work done is the greatest predictor of weight loss, so it’s back to square one and I’ll be gradually building up the amount of work done every week. This is effectively my third attempt at consistent weight loss, so if this one fails I’ll just have to accept that I’m still lazy and inconsistent, and just let the inevitable slide towards middle aged fatness continue.

Weighed in at 89.9kg this morning…

While putting up my photos from New Zealand, I forgot to add those from myself and Aisling’s cruise on the TSS Earnslaw, the last steamship on Lake Wakatipu.

Here’s a screenshot of what iTunes picked out for me when I created a playlist and told it to select at random from the Rap genre:

It seems to just move sequentially between albums, picking a random number of songs from each, rather than truly picking at random from all songs in all albums. I was expecting to end up with a complete jumble of tunes in totally random order. Pretty crap really.