A voice of sanity amongst the madness

This week I was reading the news from NZ only to be greeted with the truly shocking news that the government has just placed a ten year moratorium on the development of new fossil fueled thermal generation in NZ. Here are some sobering facts on just what this will mean for NZ in the coming ten years:

1. Most of the good hydro resources in the country have already been developed and the few remaining good ones are unlikely to be developed because of opposition by environmental groups (no doubt the same groups that have lobbied the government for a ban on thermal generation).
2. This means that most new generation built in NZ over the next 10 years will be wind with some geothermal and biomass to make up the balance.
   
3. Wind despite all its promise is still much more expensive than thermal or hydro generation. (Actually this is the main cynical reason behind the governments policy - they even admit that thermal generation is too cheap and acts as a disincentive to building wind farms.)
   

A recent study by a leading academic (from Germany, so not exactly an anti wind country if you get my drift), concluded that the potential for wind generation to offset base thermal plant is about 6% of its installed capacity. Actually what is surprising is that this number is actually greater than zero. Even if we say that the wind resource in NZ is twice as good as that in Germany (which is probably a stretch) this means that for every 100 MW of wind built, only 12 MW is useful. Or put another way, if NZ electricity peak demand grows 500 MW in the next 10 years, then to supply this electricity will require 6000 MW of wind turbines, or about 3000 wind turbines. That's right, 6000 MW, bearing in mind that NZ has 300 MW installed currently and there are already protests about it's visual impact and despoliation of the environment and so on.

So what will all this mean? Some people such as Brian Leyland have jumped on the scare tactic bandwagon asserting that blackouts could result from this policy. While I am less convinced of this, what is certain is that the price of electricity will rise in the next ten years.

Anyone who doubts that one of the foundations of western wealth and prosperity is cheap energy should go try run a business in the next ten years in NZ. Yes NZ is still based around primary industry and what does primary industry need to compete in a world market? Yes that's right, cheap electricity. Cheap electricity was one of the things that has enabled NZ in the past to offset its comparative distance from world markets. The government has just destroyed this advantage and NZs global competitiveness will soon follow. Irrigators, paper mills and milk drying plants don't run because we say they should, they run on cheap power.

So here are my predictions for NZ in the next ten years:

1. A shortage in base load electricity in the medium term will result in a 50% increase in the price of electricity;
2. Big industrial users such as the smelter in Invercargill will leave the country and go somewhere where cheap power is available;
3. Unemployment will rise, meaning that fewer people will be able to afford the sudden increase in the price of electricity.
4. Poverty will increase.
5. After some years electricity prices may start to fall again as demand growth might start to go negative for the first time in history (due to the industrial exodus).
6. Thousands more NZers will leave the country for Australia where they can get 30% more (and the gap is growing) money for the same work.
7. NZ will become exactly what Jeanette Fitzsimons and her mob at the green party want - a beautiful natural backwater where the people live a backward lifestyle, lighting their homes with candles, shivering through cold winters without electric heat or hot showers and toiling away for hours each day to grow their own food. But hey it's really great because the natural environment will be untouched!
   

Okay well I may have got a bit carried away with some of the speculations but this is where its heading sooner or later.

I am actually optimistic that someone in government in NZ will see sense soon enough before calamity. However citizens have to make them see the madness - make your viewpoint heard , get out in the street and protest, demand that the government keep its nose out of the electricity business and let businesses do what they do best. Demand freedom of thought and freedom of enterprise and most of all, demand a future for my home, the most beautiful country in the world.

Take the poll - Darwin day or not?

Recently I made the decision to reject religious sentiment from my life entirely. Naturally of course this means that I have to reconsider the significance of all the religious public holidays that are celebrated in the West. Now don't get me wrong, I love xmas and Easter but not for their religious meaning. The reason I love them and the reason I think most other people do is because it is often the one time in a year that families take time out to sit down have a meal and enjoy each other's company.

This got me thinking that I would rather have the xmas holiday period named after something which I think is more significant to humanity than the birth of Christ. Charles Darwin was the first person to understand just how we came to be on this earth. No he never understood how life was created in the first place (science is working on this one though) but he discovered how modern life has evolved from the first primitive 'proto' bacteria to the mind boggling array of diversity and complexity that exists today. The Theory of Evolution is an example of the triumph of science over mysticism, an embodiment of the realisation that we can live enriching and joyful lives based on the principle of free and rational thought. That in my mind deserves a celebration worthy of a public holiday.

So take part in my poll - would you like to see Christmas day renamed to something more significant to the modern world. I have given a couple of suggestions.

Where is religion taking you?

This article was bought to my attention this morning. This is the extremely sad story of a teacher in Sudan who may now possibly be put to death (although it appears she may just be sent home to the UK - here's hoping) for calling a teddybear Mohammed. The shocking thing is that she didn't even name it herself. She asked the boys in the class to come up with a name for the teddybear that one of the children had bought to school as part of a classroom project on animals. They of course chose the most common name for boys in Sudan - Mohammed. The rest is history, you can't call a teddybear Mohammed because this insults, yes that's right, it insults the 'prophet' Mohammed.

So here is a story of a woman who has taken considerable risk leaving the UK to teach the children of Sudan (probably at personal cost to her) and this is the kind of thanks they give her. If you think this is just a problem with Islam, then ask yourself how you would react if a child you know named a teddybear Jesus or Buddha?

Polling day

Today is polling day for the Australian federal election. Although I can't vote, there is something immensely uplifting about seeing the queues of people outside the polling places waiting to vote. Yes democracy has it's flaws and most people know what they are, despite these it is the only system that we have so far invented that at least allows (if not actively encouraging it) free society to flourish. For that we should be thankful.

The destroyers of wealth

I was reading this article in the age this morning and was stunned by this:

One line of argument is that, if the merger must go ahead, the WA Government should press for guarantees for measures such as open access to rail infrastructure.

Kloppers dismissed such suggestions this week. Asked whether rail access might be offered as a "sweetener" to get approval for the merger, he said: "We do not believe the two issues are related." In fact, in a submission to the National Competition Council in 2004, the WA Government argued that BHP and Rio were required to allow third-party rail access under the terms of their original state agreements.

"To date, no access seeker has been able to negotiate satisfactory access arrangements," the report drily notes.

This proposed 'third-party' access to BHP's and Rio Tinto's rail lines is of course being pushed by a new start-up, Fortesque Metals Group. Incredibly, it seems that some people in the government believe it would be okay to effectively steal the privately owned rail systems and give their use to this new company which hasn't even produced a single tonne of iron ore. This would mean that empty trains would be travelling along the rail network preventing full trains from Rio or BHP from using their own rail lines!

The flow on effect of this is will reduce BHP and Rio's output, reduce their worldwide competitiveness, increase the price of iron ore due to an artificially imposed scarcity, and ultimately increase the price of every iron dependent product in the world (nearly everything).

It is ironic don't you think, that a government attempting to 'free' up the market, 'promote' competition and lower prices, by stealing the assets of one company and gifting them to another, will have precisely the opposite effect.

I am stunned that such attitudes still persist today.

Confronting the water 'crisis'

Australia has developed what I would call a hysterical attitude to water in the past few years. In the public there is an attitude of blame. An attitude that is constantly demanding someone else to fix the problem. The government needs to do this, the council should do that. These attitudes have been brought into the open by the prolonged drought but the drought is only a symptom of the problem not the cause.

The cause is far more fundamental - water is not free and not an automatic human right. If you want this scarce resource then you must earn it. Whether this means collecting it in a tank on your roof, or obtaining it from the municipal supply so be it. The problem is that we have the government distorting the system by providing an essentially free on tap supply for everyone by subsidising the 'semi private' watocracies.

Water is one of those untouchable dogmas that everyone assumes is a natural right for all humanity. Well, the fact is that your modern water system requires a complex system of pumps, dams, weirs, meters and valves. All this is not as inexpensive as most people believe. Complex engineering is required to keep this life blood flowing to Australian homes. It's true that people are wantonly wasteful of water in Australia. However, people are so irresponsible about it because it costs essentially nothing. This creates an exorbitant demand so that we are perpetually in a state of requiring more dams and more desal plants, yet the crisis never abates. The most irksome thing of all - the government is constantly giving us the guilts about our water usage. The ads on TV never stop! Focusing in on things like the guilty homeowner watering his lawn when it is not his turn!

My solution is this - auction off the water supply to the highest bidder and allow them to charge what they see fit. Initially prices will rise and people will pay more for their water. However, this will see a significant reduction in demand, and even if it doesn't, a market abhors a vacuum and new innovative entrepreneurs will come up with new and most likely better ways to supply water. In compensation for selling off of the water supply business, the government will then be obliged to reduce rates/taxes meaning that the average individual may be better off than before. In any case, he will then have personal choice on what he spends his money on, water or something else.

A rise in water prices will encourage investment in water infrastructure once budding entrepreneurs realise that there is a profit to be made. It could even mean a total revamp of the system, a water delivery business on trucks or something of that nature - who knows what the most efficient method of supply is, only a market can determine that.

A water entrepreneur must be allowed to recover his cost of investment by being allowed to charge whatever he desires. His only moral is to satisfy the market. If he charges too much nobody will buy his water and he will go out of business. If he charges too little he will also go out of business. The end result of such 'cut-throat' competition will be innovation. Innovation, which only occurs when there is a profit motive, will continue to drive the water price to the individual consumer down so that in some future year water will be even cheaper than it is now - yet it will be plentiful and people will be watering their gardens and lawns once again guilt free.

Can one book change your life?

Well after over 1070 pages of small print typing I have finished Ayn Rand's "Magnum Opus", the novel 'Atlas Shrugged' which describes in terms of a fictional story, the essential aspects of the objectivist philosophy she founded. I can now say, that second to no other book I have read, this novel resonated with me on a level that no other has. It has confirmed what I only previously suspected and sometimes was made to feel ashamed of by the 'mystics' of the world - that a rational world view is possible and essential to individual happiness. The essential tenets of her philosophy are rationality, liberty and mans right to be happy.

In any case, this book has made me question some of my previous posts as at times irrational. I will have more to say about this soon, particularly my views on global warming (not whether or not global warming is real, as this is a rational conclusion based on the facts, but more on what we should be doing about it). This will have to wait until another time as right now I'm tired and heading to bed.

Money -- the root of all evil?

Money, why do we need it. Surely society would be much better off if we all just learned to get along and didn't need money? Well, don't you think? No I don't. I recently had such a conversation over a lunch with a man who is proposing a legislation to abolish money. I was shocked that anyone could have such a view. Anyway at the time I felt that I didn't articulate my argument very well. So I thought I would let someone who did know the true virtue of money argue for me. The following is an excerpt from 'Atlas Shrugged' by Ayn Rand.

So you think that money is the root of all evil?" said Francisco d'Anconia. "Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?

"When you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others. It is not the moochers or the looters who give value to money. Not an ocean of tears not all the guns in the world can transform those pieces of paper in your wallet into the bread you will need to survive tomorrow. Those pieces of paper, which should have been gold, are a token of honor--your claim upon the energy of the men who produce. Your wallet is your statement of hope that somewhere in the world around you there are men who will not default on that moral principle which is the root of money, Is this what you consider evil?

"Have you ever looked for the root of production? Take a look at an electric generator and dare tell yourself that it was created by the muscular effort of unthinking brutes. Try to grow a seed of wheat without the knowledge left to you by men who had to discover it for the first time. Try to obtain your food by means of nothing but physical motions--and you'll learn that man's mind is the root of all the goods produced and of all the wealth that has ever existed on earth.

"But you say that money is made by the strong at the expense of the weak? What strength do you mean? It is not the strength of guns or muscles. Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think. Then is money made by the man who invents a motor at the expense of those who did not invent it? Is money made by the intelligent at the expense of the fools? By the able at the expense of the incompetent? By the ambitious at the expense of the lazy? Money is made--before it can be looted or mooched--made by the effort of every honest man, each to the extent of his ability. An honest man is one who knows that he can't consume more than he has produced.'

"To trade by means of money is the code of the men of good will. Money rests on the axiom that every man is the owner of his mind and his effort. Money allows no power to prescribe the value of your effort except the voluntary choice of the man who is willing to trade you his effort in return. Money permits you to obtain for your goods and your labor that which they are worth to the men who buy them, but no more. Money permits no deals except those to mutual benefit by the unforced judgment of the traders. Money demands of you the recognition that men must work for their own benefit, not for their own injury, for their gain, not their loss--the recognition that they are not beasts of burden, born to carry the weight of your misery--that you must offer them values, not wounds--that the common bond among men is not the exchange of suffering, but the exchange of goods. Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men's stupidity, but your talent to their reason; it demands that you buy, not the shoddiest they offer, but the best that your money can find. And when men live by trade--with reason, not force, as their final arbiter--it is the best product that wins, the best performance, the man of best judgment and highest ability--and the degree of a man's productiveness is the degree of his reward. This is the code of existence whose tool and symbol is money. Is this what you consider evil?

"But money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver. It will give you the means for the satisfaction of your desires, but it will not provide you with desires. Money is the scourge of the men who attempt to reverse the law of causality--the men who seek to replace the mind by seizing the products of the mind.

"Money will not purchase happiness for the man who has no concept of what he wants: money will not give him a code of values, if he's evaded the knowledge of what to value, and it will not provide him with a purpose, if he's evaded the choice of what to seek. Money will not buy intelligence for the fool, or admiration for the coward, or respect for the incompetent. The man who attempts to purchase the brains of his superiors to serve him, with his money replacing his judgment, ends up by becoming the victim of his inferiors. The men of intelligence desert him, but the cheats and the frauds come flocking to him, drawn by a law which he has not discovered: that no man may be smaller than his money. Is this the reason why you call it evil?

"Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth--the man who would make his own fortune no matter where he started. If an heir is equal to his money, it serves him; if not, it destroys him. But you look on and you cry that money corrupted him. Did it? Or did he corrupt his money? Do not envy a worthless heir; his wealth is not yours and you would have done no better with it. Do not think that it should have been distributed among you; loading the world with fifty parasites instead of one, would not bring back the dead virtue which was the fortune. Money is a living power that dies without its root. Money will not serve the mind that cannot match it. Is this the reason why you call it evil?

"Money is your means of survival. The verdict you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon your life. If the source is corrupt, you have damned your own existence. Did you get your money by fraud? By pandering to men's vices or men's stupidity? By catering to fools, in the hope of getting more than your ability deserves? By lowering your standards? By doing work you despise for purchasers you scorn? If so, then your money will not give you a moment's or a penny's worth of joy. Then all the things you buy will become, not a tribute to you, but a reproach; not an achievement, but a reminder of shame. Then you'll scream that money is evil. Evil, because it would not pinch-hit for your self-respect? Evil, because it would not let you enjoy your depravity? Is this the root of your hatred of money?

"Money will always remain an effect and refuse to replace you as the cause. Money is the product of virtue, but it will not give you virtue and it will not redeem your vices. Money will not give you the unearned, neither in matter nor in spirit. Is this the root of your hatred of money?

"Or did you say it's the love of money that's the root of all evil? To love a thing is to know and love its nature. To love money is to know and love the fact that money is the creation of the best power within you, and your passkey to trade your effort for the effort of the best among men. It's the person who would sell his soul for a nickel, who is loudest in proclaiming his hatred of money--and he has good reason to hate it. The lovers of money are willing to work for it. They know they are able to deserve it.

"Let me give you a tip on a clue to men's characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.

"Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter. So long as men live together on earth and need means to deal with one another--their only substitute, if they abandon money, is the muzzle of a gun.

"But money demands of you the highest virtues, if you wish to make it or to keep it. Men who have no courage, pride or self-esteem, men who have no moral sense of their right to their money and are not willing to defend it as they defend their life, men who apologize for being rich--will not remain rich for long. They are the natural bait for the swarms of looters that stay under rocks for centuries, but come crawling out at the first smell of a man who begs to be forgiven for the guilt of owning wealth. They will hasten to relieve him of the guilt--and of his life, as he deserves.

"Then you will see the rise of the men of the double standard--the men who live by force, yet count on those who live by trade to create the value of their looted money--the men who are the hitchhikers of virtue. In a moral society, these are the criminals, and the statutes are written to protect you against them. But when a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law--men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims--then money becomes its creators' avenger. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they've passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter.

"Do you wish to know whether that day is coming? Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society's virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion--when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing--when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors--when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you--when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice--you may know that your society is doomed. Money is so noble a medium that is does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half-property, half-loot.

"Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men's protection and the base of a moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values. Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it. Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it bounces, marked, 'Account overdrawn.'

"When you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good. Do not expect them to stay moral and lose their lives for the purpose of becoming the fodder of the immoral. Do not expect them to produce, when production is punished and looting rewarded. Do not ask, 'Who is destroying the world? You are.

"You stand in the midst of the greatest achievements of the greatest productive civilization and you wonder why it's crumbling around you, while you're damning its life-blood--money. You look upon money as the savages did before you, and you wonder why the jungle is creeping back to the edge of your cities. Throughout men's history, money was always seized by looters of one brand or another, whose names changed, but whose method remained the same: to seize wealth by force and to keep the producers bound, demeaned, defamed, deprived of honor. That phrase about the evil of money, which you mouth with such righteous recklessness, comes from a time when wealth was produced by the labor of slaves--slaves who repeated the motions once discovered by somebody's mind and left unimproved for centuries. So long as production was ruled by force, and wealth was obtained by conquest, there was little to conquer, Yet through all the centuries of stagnation and starvation, men exalted the looters, as aristocrats of the sword, as aristocrats of birth, as aristocrats of the bureau, and despised the producers, as slaves, as traders, as shopkeepers--as industrialists.

"To the glory of mankind, there was, for the first and only time in history, a country of money--and I have no higher, more reverent tribute to pay to America, for this means: a country of reason, justice, freedom, production, achievement. For the first time, man's mind and money were set free, and there were no fortunes-by-conquest, but only fortunes-by-work, and instead of swordsmen and slaves, there appeared the real maker of wealth, the greatest worker, the highest type of human being--the self-made man--the American industrialist.

"If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose--because it contains all the others--the fact that they were the people who created the phrase 'to make money.' No other language or nation had ever used these words before; men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity--to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created. The words 'to make money' hold the essence of human morality.

"Yet these were the words for which Americans were denounced by the rotted cultures of the looters' continents. Now the looters' credo has brought you to regard your proudest achievements as a hallmark of shame, your prosperity as guilt, your greatest men, the industrialists, as blackguards, and your magnificent factories as the product and property of muscular labor, the labor of whip-driven slaves, like the pyramids of Egypt. The rotter who simpers that he sees no difference between the power of the dollar and the power of the whip, ought to learn the difference on his own hide-- as, I think, he will.

"Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to be the tool by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of men. Blood, whips and guns--or dollars. Take your choice--there is no other--and your time is running out."

Some advice for the apolitical

Today John Howard finally called the Australian federal election. So to mark the occasion and since I can't vote in Australia I thought I would add my two cents to the debate. Here is as I see it.

On the one hand you have old wooden spoon, the leader of the liberal party. Australia has just gotten so bored with Mr Howard after 12 years that he might actually be the first Australian leader to get voted out for being, well how else can I put, dull. Of course, being a politician these are far from his only crimes. In my mind his failure to recognise climate change as THE issue and his failure to ratify Kyoto are his biggest short comings. Of course, he will prattle on about the economy and his lack of intervention, lowering of taxes and to be fair his general less government is more fiscal policies are extremely sound, but hey we're bored with you.

Now crossing the fence to the other camp and we have Mr Rudd. This guy is so unbelievably slimey that he literally glistens in the sun. Whenever he opens his mouth, I find it extremely hard to take him seriously and I'm not quite sure what it is but it seems, well, he can't be trusted. About the only thing one can say about Mr Rudd on the policy front is that his policies are not that different from the liberals. His biggest shortcoming (although admittedly most people who like to shirk away from hard work see it as a positive), will be to repeal the work choices legislation, allowing unions to sneak back in through the back door and take the Australian economy hostage again. This will be a truly backward step for work place relations in Australia. However, Mr Rudd seems to have pulled the ultimate trump card going into this election - the big CC. Yes Rudd has promised to ratify Kyoto if elected, and one hopes that this will quickly pave the way for Australian leadership in reducing carbon emissions. In my mind this is the only issue going into this election and therefore you simply must vote Labour. It hurts me to say it, but there it is, vote Labour.

113 mins of agony

Well the 2007 Melbourne half marathon was a total disaster for me. Here follows my race report:

It was a gorgeous Melbourne spring morning and I'm sure the organisers could not have dreamed of better weather for the first run on the new course. With the temperature slightly coolish and little to no wind it was a real PB day. My morning started in bad fashion, I was still recovering from a bout of gastro on Monday and Tuesday where I ate nothing either day. I thought I would get up early and watch the All Blacks demolish France to give me a feel good feeling before the race. Well as you all know this didn't happen but I was determined to restore a bit of kiwi pride for myself and finish the half marathon in a respectable time.

In amongst the emotion and anticipation of the crowd at the start I was feeling pretty good although a little concerned that I would fade in the second half due to my injury prone preparation and the illness early in the week (as it turned out I was spot on with this assessment). After the 20 minute delay for the start I jumped out of the blocks and after a few kms I was feeling pretty good and had settled into my revised target pace of 4:20-4:30 pretty well. This continued until about the 7 km mark at which point I was starting to not feel so well and starting to get my first stomach cramps. At this point my pace was also starting to drop and people were starting to go past me. In any race over any distance, it is pretty much the worst thing when you start to feel like you are going seriously backwards in the field. Some people can get inspiration from it and use grit their teeth and carry on. For a while this what was I managed to do and going through half way point my time was still a respectable 50 mins. Now however the stomach cramps were playing on my mind and starting to throw me off my stride and I absolutely had to go number two. So a four minute toilet stop at the next drink station meant the 1:40 was out of the window and I was just going to try hang on until the finish. I managed to do a couple of five minute kms and was watching rather depressingly as first the 1:40 pacer flew by, then the 1:45. I was also falling apart mentally now. My pace had dropped from 5mins back to 6 and I felt as though I was standing still as people continued to stream past me. The last few kms were shear agony as stomach cramps combined with fatigue meant every step was a struggle. I could not even manage a final sprint around the G to finish and was finally relieved to cross the finish in 1:53, a full 24 mins slower than my PB.

Considering the circumstances however, I was pleased to actually have the determination to finish and I take satisfaction that aside from a DNF that is the slowest I can go in a half.

A big congrats to the organisers on what was a super course (the only gripe being crashing into the 5 and 10 km runners going over William Barak bridge). I will be back next year to take on the big one, my first full mara.

Gastro

The bad run of illness continues for me this year. This time I have been struck down with about of Gastroenteritis (self diagnosed). The onset was sudden on Sunday evening and by 2am I was dry reaching the final contents of my guts into the toilet. This continued right until Monday avo and it's fair to say I've been feeling pretty rough the last few days.

I also have the biggie on Sunday, the Melbourne half. Thanks to my foot injury my preparation has been destroyed and this latest bout of gastro has just finished me off. Nevertheless I am determined to run on Sunday and I have decided to take the attitude of no pressure and just run to enjoy - an attitude that is usually anathema to me for a race but given the circumstances I think it is the best approach.

News for Asia

A quick update is in order because Asia has exciting news. She has secured a short term contract at Hutt Hospital until the end of the year. This all came about rather quickly and on a whim after her old boss dropped her the suggestion when she was in NZ two weeks ago. The plan is to get her qualification recognition application (so she can work in Australia) in before she leaves Melbourne next Tuesday. The idea is that she can 'get back in form' after a year not working in her profession which will hopefully make it easier for her to get a job over here when she gets back in the new year. So it will all be a little sad for us both as we say goodbye for a few months, but we both figure it is the best move for the long run.

Oops where did that month go?

I'm totally surprised that it has been a whole month since I last posted. It has been a busy month I suppose - well at least that is some sort of excuse. A few things to report. Asia has spent two weeks in NZ catching up with friends and I met up with her in the weekend in Auckland and we went to Anna and Damian's wedding together. I enjoyed the wedding, minus the prolonged catholic ceremony, and came away from it with the usual post wedding fuzzy feeling. Work has been extremely hectic in the last month - I've managed to complete a huge project plus fit in a trip to Brisbane for 'networking' in the mean time. On the running front, training for the Melbourne half had been going swimmingly and I had been gradually building up the kms to about 40 per week for the last few weeks. However, my right foot injury has reoccured and I have decided that the only way to fix it is to take a prolonged period off (hopefully less than three weeks) and let it heal. With the race only three weeks away on Sunday, this isn't exactly ideal for my preparation but we will see how things pan out.

Agnostics, New Cars and Personal Bests

This blog is going to be a aggregation of several completely unrelated things. Firstly, I have bought a new used car, woo hoo! After almost a year without I have finally caved in to the convenience. Actually, Asia and I really wanted to explore some of Victoria and it is extremely hard to do without a car. Also, now that my running is really picking up again, having a car is almost a neccesity for getting to and from training/events and still allowing some time for a social life. The car is a wind red 2001 Nissan Pulsar, my Dad I know will be extremely happy with this choice. Given my last car was a Nissan and it proved extremely reliable, in the end this was the deciding factor. Hopefully this one is just as reliable.

I ran my first 10 km race in over a year on Sunday. I came in at just over a personal best at 42:30. Actually it might be a P.B if only by 5 seconds, although I have a feeling a 10 km race at the start of 06 was a 42:15, although I could be wrong. I was actually intending to run a half mara but due to a combination of factors such as piss poor preparation, a mean as cold followed by a shocking flu and a general Sunday morning laziness, I decided to run the 10 km instead. I think it was a good decision in the end and I am happy with the time as I felt like I had a little bit left in the tank at the end. My short term to medium goal for the 10 km is to crack 40 mins which I think I can do reasonably soon if a few factors go my way.

On to more serious matters. I have recently be personally confronted by the agnostic viewpoint that goes something like this:

I can't understand why anything exists at all therefore there must be a God or God like being who made everything

Agnosticism as defined by dictionary.com is:

1. The doctrine that certainty about first principles or absolute truth is unattainable and that only perceptual phenomena are objects of exact knowledge.
2. The belief that there can be no proof either that God exists or that God does not exist.

I am certainly Agnostic in the sense of the first definition - this is a fundamental tenet if you believe in science. However, the second definition, while at first glance it might seem like a reasonable viewpoint it doesn't really get to the heart of the matter - there is a complete lack of evidence for a personal God. This in itself is 'evidence' for no God. While definition 2 is strictly true, we can be damn sure, 99.9% sure there is no personal God, based on the lack of available evidence.

The question of existence itself (why are we here) is a fair one and physicists struggle with it everyday, but logically it actually makes it less likely that there is a God, rather than more likely. The question of existence is not a justification for agnosticism (in the previously defined sense) about a heavenly deity. If you consider that the universe is extremely complex, much more so than any human or even the human race can comprehend then you posit that there must be a God - it is logically consistent to say that this God must be even more complex than the universe itself, since to create it God must necessarily be able to understand it. The universe exists, we know this (although there is still a possibility that it is just our imagination) - why believe in something even more extraordinarily complex than the universe, especially when there is zero evidence for its existence - this is just anti science.

A good analogy is the purple spaghetti monster. I can not disprove the existence of the purple spaghetti monster since there is nothing that will ever disprove the small chance that he might exist, therefore I am agnostic about him. However, as there is no evidence for him, I can say that I am 99.9% sure that he doesn't exist. God is just like this, except that there are churches and billions of people who believe in him. If I started the church of the purple spaghetti monster, would you join? Most likely I would be laughed at universally by almost everyone on the planet.

The beauty of the scientific method is that we can never prove anything beyond a small doubt, this is why science advances and why I don't believe in God because religious people can never be proved wrong - they have dogmatic faith and if evidence contradicts their viewpoint they just say you must have more faith or you don't have enough faith. Faith is bullshit, for want a better word. Give me evidence and I will worship what it shows...

Sorry for the double rant, but 50/50 agnosticism bugs me.

Finding my way in the demon haunted world

Well it has been a while since I had a 'philosophical' post, so here we are. Some of you who read my blog from time to time (I don't really think there are that many), might be a tad confused with some of my apparent contradictions. Well, here is the deal - so am I. You see I'm really still deciding on my views across a number of issues. However, I have had an epihany of late, one that I kind of already knew in my heart but hadn't really formalised. It's rather obvious to me now and I hope that most of the rest of the world comes to this realisation at some stage as well. You see I have stumbled upon reason once again, I lost it for a while but now I have found it again.

Reason is the language of science, the language of evidence and the only 'reason' we have a modern advanced society that is not static but always improving and learning new things about itself and the world we live in. Reason advances mankind as surely as the sun rises in the morning - but hey this is all heresay and speak easy from me. Don't believe what I say, find out for yourself.

One of the best things about reason is that if you have an idea about something, the way something works, why something behaves a certain way etc etc, you can always say what will prove you wrong and what will change your mind. You see, reason is simply the best way we have of deciding what is truth or fact and what is myth or bullshit. If you have an idea about something, you simply way up the evidence and let the facts speak for themselves. This is why for example I am an Atheist. There is no evidence for a personal 'God' in the sky. But I can tell you exactly what would change my mind. If God were to come down from 'heaven' tomorrow and announce his presence to world, I would become a believer, assuming of course that it could be proven that it was God and not some elaborate hoax, but you get my drift.

People who 'believe' in reason never speak in absolutes like fundamentalists, there is always some doubt but often you can say how much doubt. New evidence comes along all the time and one must constantly evaluate their beliefs to see if they are still true. Some people may find this slightly disconcerting that we can never be absolutely sure about anything - but many things that hold true often present such overwhelming evidence that they may as well be absolutely true. Some examples for such things are evolution, the earth is approximatley spherical, the earth orbits the sun, the sun is powered by nuclear fusion, antibiotics kill bacteria (and not viruses as somehow many people still believe) and the chemical formula for water is H20. Of course I could go on and on. I find the whole concept of reason and truth seeking so invigorating you might even call it a 'spirtual' experience. I love it when some belief that I cherish gets proven wrong - usually becuase the real answer is more enlightning, perhaps filling a previous gap in knowledge.

So I profess to have turned a new leaf on this blog and in my personal opinions from now on. I will try not to have an opinion on something unless I have looked at the evidence and the facts and become somewhat knowledable on the subject. "Trust the experts" is damn good advice in my opinion.

I have never formed for myself a satisfactory political philosophy, mostly because people on both sides of the traditional political spectrum routinely expouse bullshit and anti-truths in the name of vote grabbing for an easily misled public. However, recently I have stumbled upon libertaranism as a political philosophy and to me it seems to fit with my new found trust in reason. To a layman, essentially a libertarian philosophy combines the best parts of traditional right and left wing politics. Some people say that libertarians are left wing morally and right wing economically. This doesn't really tell you much does it. Well okay so this includes protection of the free market, which means reducing as much as possible both corporate and social welfare, reducing taxes, protection of individual property rights etc. Some of the 'moral' ideas libertarians support include - euthanasia (assisted suicide), abortion, gay rights, women's rights, drug legilisation (all drugs, not just marijuana), freedom of speech and libertarians generally anti-war (except in self defence). The idea is that 'less government is more' and that people make better decisions for themselves than the government. I am trying this political philosophy on and so far I like it, I will let you know if I change my mind...

Greece: Part 4

Okay so my cold is finally on the wane, although this really has been a nasty one. I can't remember the last time I had a cold this bad. I thought I would get up to date with all my Greece posts within a few days so I'm somewhat surprised to be writing this final installment almost two weeks after we got back.

Brad and Asia's 'Greece on the improv' had been working out fine so far despite it being close to the peak tourist season. The only thing we had booked up to the time of the wedding was the flights there and back. I guess it helped to have accommodation provided. The whole time we were in Crete I was thinking I really should book the ferries to the islands for after the wedding. Well as it turned out, it wasn't until the day before we left that I decided this was a necessity. Unfortunately the ferry to Santorini was fully booked for the Tuesday, so some quick decisions on my part and I decided we would only spend one night in Santorini and two in the Island of Naxos, followed by a night in Athens before the long journey home. It meant that we had to spend one further day and night in Crete - things could be worse right? The rental car that we had hired as a group was due back on the Monday evening, so I decided we should get it for another day so that we could explore the west and south of the Island before we left. It turned out that we had a really great day on that Tuesday, visiting a truly amazing beach on the South Coast (Libyan Sea, funny to think we were so close to Africa).

In the end it turned out that Nick and Georgia were catching the same boat as us to Santorini. We really enjoyed the ride and the chance to catch up with them, as during the week prior to the wedding they had just been so flat tack we hardly saw them. The rough guide (and the lonely planet too) says that the best way to arrive at Santorini is on an open deck 'slow' ferry, which is what we happened to be on. I must say after riding on the fast ferry the next day I have to agree with them. Comparing the fast ferry to the slow ferry is somewhat like comparing riding in the car to riding a bike - you get where you are going a hell of a lot faster in the car, but man do you see a lot more on the bike. As we approached the port, the walls of the caldera rose up around and enveloped us - the sheer cliffs hundreds of metres above you to which photos can scarcely do justice. Santorini was incredibly touristic and I guess one of those places you just have to go once. There are amazing photo shots of the caldera on every street corner.

The next day we were on our way to the Island of Naxos. There were plenty of tourists here too, but much less than Santorini. Asia and I really enjoyed the chance to unwind with a couple of days on the beach and eating some great food. In fact I would say the best meal we had while in Greece, with the wedding as an exception, was at the taverna Scirocco in the main square we ate at the first night - big ups to the rough guide for this recommendation.

The final adventure of our trip was in Athens. We had given ourselves one night and two days to explore and as it turned out this was plenty. Everybody who goes to Athens goes to the Acropolis, the high rocky outcropping in the centre of Athens host to a plethora of ancient monuments including the famed Parthenon, one of the most recognisable icons from the ancient world. However, in a mean stroke of luck, there was a workers strike on at the Acropolis so it was closed for the whole weekend and we couldn't go and see it. We had to make do with views from below and the none to unimpressive National Museum of Greece.

So that was it, two weeks of sun, surf, fun and relaxation. Only 22 hours on a plane and we were back home...

Greece: Part 3

Got myself a mean cold today, snot coming out all over the shop. Funny thing to get a cold after being on holiday, since usually you get a cold from being run down. I guess the long flight and going straight back to work didn't help much. Okay so on with the Greece story:

After a thoroughly relaxing first week, we finally came to the real purpose of our trip - Nick and Georgia's wedding. The ceremony was a traditional Greek one in this quaint little chapel in the hills about 40 mins drive from Iraklio. Naturally we didn't understand a single word of what was said but luckily one of Georgia's friends, Julie had prepared a summary of the proceedings in English so we could follow what was going on. The ceremony was pretty sweet and the three laps of the altar at the end with everyone heaving rice onto the newly married couple was a particular highlight. Onto the reception then, where the spread of food was truly amazing. Things like goat, lamb , greek salads and olive-oiled potatoes were just some of the things on offer. Far to much food, but hey it's a wdding right. Asia and I were feeling pretty tired for some reason, we had had a late night the night before and I think it started to catch up on us. So we decided to pike from the reception about 1:30am - just when the Greek dancing was getting in full swing. In summary though it was a thoroughly enjoyable wedding, up there in the top one or two that I have been to.

Greece: Part 2

Well it's taken me a while to get around to updating the blog and continuing our Greece story. Couple of reasons for this, firstly both Asia and I got hit bad by jet-lag and today is about the first day I have felt like I'm not in zombie land. Mental note to self: never go back to work the day after arriving from a seven hour timezone change and a temperature change of 35 degrees to 7. Melbourne has been seriously cold since we arrived back, New Zealand cold even.

My friend Toby from NZ has been staying with us the last couple of nights, he has made a stopover on the way to his big OE in the UK. It's been great to catch up and I'm now nursing a seriously sore head after one drink to many at the Quiet Man, our local Irish establishment, last night.

Okay on with the Greek story:

It would remiss of me not to mention the truly amazing place that we were lucky enough to stay at for free while we were in Crete. Nick and Georgia, our friends who got married, had organised for a friend of a friend, Michael to loan a few of us the use of his house for a week. The house was built in a semi traditional greek style and situated on a decent block of land containing grapevines and olive trees. The setting was truly picturesque, and the photos, while good, don't even do it justice:



So this is one big thank you to Michael who generosity was truly incredible.

Most of the week leading up to the wedding consisted of late nights, Greeks typically don't have dinner until after 9pm and when in Rome, sleepins followed by afternoons lazing on the incredible beaches:



A couple of cultural differences in Greece were immediately obvious - it's everyman for himself on the roads, and don't flush your toilet paper! The roads in Greece are crazy. Road rules are really an afterthought and those painted white lines that you normally use for crossing the road as a pedestrian, don't even think about wandering out in front of an oncoming car, they will not stop and you will certainly become another statistic. The toilet situation was a bit odd at first but once you got used to it wasn't really too bad. Apparently the story is that the plumbing in Greece can't handle the toilet paper so every toilet has a little bin where you place your used toilet paper.

Okay, I've had enough of typing for now. To come still is the wedding story and our journey after Crete. Hopefully this time in the next couple of days.

Were back, Greece - Part 1

We're back and what a fantastic whirlwind break. I think we both need a holiday to recover from our holiday! Since there is far too much for one blog post, I'm going to split our adventures into a few, maybe more, parts. So here is part one...

We set off at for Greece on Sunday evening the first of July and we nearly didn't make the airport because of my antics. Firstly, I decided that it would be an excellent idea to go for a 23 km training run in the morning before flying out in the evening. As if this wasn't a bad enough idea, I then followed this with a large feed of bacon and eggs and then not feeling suffuciently full or hydrated, I decided to wolf down a super smoothie (banana, blueberries, yoghurt, milk and protein powder). For about 1-2 hours after I was feeling greet, not unusual after having run so far. Then things got ugly, a real bad headache started to emerge and I started to feel very queasy - all this about 2 hours before we were due to be picked up to go to the airport. I had to lie down and Asia had to pack my luggage for me. I continued to feel sicker and I became certain that sooner or later I was going to vomit, the super smoothie, bacon and egg mixture was really starting to disagree with my stomach. So about 30 mins before our imminent departure I rushed to the loo and vomited for the first of three times before the taxi arrived. Nothing however was going to stop me from getting on that plane, although I admit 22 hours in a cramped plane not feeling the best wasn't a prospect I was looking forward to. However, the whole time I knew this wasn't a bug and just a combination of exhaustion and eating the wrong food. I wasn't done with vomiting at home though, no sooner had the taxi left and the motion had me feeling queasy again. I asked the guy to pull over and very graciously, just like a 4am drunk, I stumbled out of the cab and puked the remainder of my insides out into a gutter on Mt Alexander Road - the poor taxi driver didn't know what to think! The final vomit though had done the trick and I immediately felt better and within 30 mins was feeling pretty much 100% - we were finally going to Greece and we had two weeks of sun, sand and swimming to look forward to.

The trip over was just your usual uneventful 22 hour plane ride - although I have to say the Emirates service and food was fantastic. We arrived in Athens at about 2pm in the avo and were immediately hit by the heat. We managed to negotiate the metro system with only two fights, and before you new it we were on the overnight ferry bound for Iraklio, Crete. We decided that the extra money for a cabin was worth it and pretty much slept the whole journey (9 hours). The shot below is of a surprisingly fresh looking Asia as our ferry comes into the harbour at Iraklio.

Luca and Brendan were kind enough to pick us up from the port and taxied us back to our accomodation, about 10 km from the centre of Iraklio. The shots below are of the next couple of days, me at Knossos (some ancient ruins from the Minoan civilisation pre BC), Asia and Brendan at a 'Taverna' on a beach on the south coast of Crete and a shot of the beautiful and mostly tourist free beach just in front of the taverna.

Okay that's about my typing limit for now, more to come over the next few days...

Greece looms large

Tomorrow we depart on our two week sojourn to the Greek Islands. The principle reason for the trip is to celebrate our friends Nick and Georgia's wedding, although it's not a half bad spot to go for a holiday either - at least that's what I'm told. It is a funny thing, this trip, as it has always seemed about two months away, right up until last week even. Asia and I are pretty excited now, it will be our first time in Greece and it promises to be an interesting cultural experience. I am having a 'computer free' two weeks, so suffice to say I won't be posting until we get back. Then I will redeem my lack of pictures over the last month or so.

On another exciting note, I am off to the Bledisloe cup clash between the All Blacks and Wallabies tonight at the G, which will be in front of a sold out crowd of 90,000+ - it is going to be epic!

More on the whaling

I know I said I would not add any further comment about the whaling issue, but my brother has sent me another email, so in the interests of "fair" debate I will publish it. Also, the more I publish his email the more I believe my argument is strengthened - I'm sure the opposite of the effect he intended. Okay, so here is the latest incantation:

Hayden:
I'm gonna stop talking about this now because you've clearly been conned.

Brad:
Lets not call names. This doesn't add anything to the debate and when this is the first sentence of your reply, it rather dilutes any further message you try to get across.

Hayden:
But i do have to answer some of your points (sic) convenient you decided to split up my email rather than right it up as one coherent message.

Brad:
The reason I split up your email was to make it easy for me to reply to your comments, rather than having to refer back to each point one at a time This is messy and hard for people reading to follow. I don't think any of your meaning was lost.

Hayden:
You blame the video for being on the whaling boat, it had the only camera, but more importantly your point that it was biased when the article you referenced only interviewed Greenpeace, please be consistent in your criticisms, secondly putting a boat into reverse when you've already committed to hit it is nothing more than a PR gesture.

Brad:
I already said that it is very difficult to apportion any blame for the collision to either boat because we can not see what the Nissin Maru is doing. I did not blame the video. What we can see though is that the Artic Sunrise tried to take evasive action by putting it's props into reverse and by turning. If you have made a decision to ram a ship, then why pull out half way through - it doesn't make much sense to me. Posting only an article from Greenpeace was an oversight by me, so I corrected this in my next post by using an article from the New Scientist website - this magazine is science based and one of the most objective magazines I have read. I'm not sure if you checked out this link, but you might want to pay particular attention to the section on whaling and then report back to me on whether you still think it is sustainable.

Hayden:
As for democracy, Greenpeace shouldn't be responding to public opinion because they should have the environment's best interests at heart - not what the public wants, if they truly were environmentalists that's what they'd be doing. Also how on earth is a boat of that size expected to be able to maneuver out of the way of the Greenpeace boat it couldn't deliberately have hit it if it wanted to. The propaganda ministers quote was badly worded, nut (sic) basically what I'm saying is i could find no evidence of any truly scientific research, done by independent scientists on their website, that should be a concern to anybody who wants to donate to this organization.

Brad:
I think you missed my point here...
Don't look on the Greenpeace website for evidence, try New Scientist you will find bucket loads there.

Hayden:
The biologists i was referring to lectured me on conservation at the university of Canterbury, i believe, unlike the Greenpeace leaders that qualifies them to speak about it. It is not a logic fallacy to say i love all animals you eat steak, it doesn't mean you hate cows, who also suffer a brutal death, and i said i believe whales aren't being exploited.

Brad:
Cows are farmed, and although some people say this isn't sustainable, I believe it is. I am yet to see a commercial whale farm. When/if we do, then maybe I will be convinced that hunting whales is sustainable. I think whales and cows are a completely different "kettle of fish". Sorry to harp on the same point, but please check out the link to New Scientist in my previous post. Maybe the scientists will convince you that whales have and are being exploited.

Hayden:
But despite all this you have changed the debate, initially the debate wasn't over whether whaling is right or wrong, or whether the Greenpeace boat deliberately hit the whaling ship, for the debate we accepted that the boat did deliberately hit the whaling ship, an act which you supported then. So accepting that Greenpeace was at fault as you initially did, you still supported their actions bringing me back to my initial point, that it wasn't the manner of the G20 protest you had a problem with it was what they were protesting against.

Brad:
I thought we both agreed that violent protest was wrong. That debate finished and we moved on to something else - the whaling, which I'm sorry to say you initiated on the phone the other night. I disagreed with both the manner of the G20 protest (violence) and also what they were protesting about. Again, I think you missed my point.

Hayden:
Please post this email as well.

Case closed now
Hayden

The whaling debate heats up

So my bro has got a little fired up about the whole whaling issue. I copy from his latest email to me...

Hayden says:

First of all i challenge you to watch this video clip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlEQur0pUmg

Brad:
Many of the comments on this video seem to suggest that the Greenpeace vessel had right of way. Also as the much smaller vessel they had far more to lose from the collision than the whaling boat. Also, Greenpeace was clearly hard on the reverse power as soon as the captain realised the Nissin Maru wasn't going to give way. As we can not see what the whaling boat is doing (convenient that the camera was on board this ship) it is almost impossible to draw any reasonable conclusions from this video. I will investigate more when I have time but for the moment I am not convinced GP was at fault. If we can see a similar video from the Greenpeace boat or from above the two boats we might get a better idea.

Hayden says:
If you honestly believe the whaling ship was at fault after watching that i feel sorry for you, you've obviously been conned by an organization with no scientific base and a lack of intelligence who respond to public opinion rather than to help the environment.

Brad says:
Hang on, isn't responding to public opinion what democracy is about? Are you saying democracy is wrong and we should all do what you think is right?

Hayden says:
Also i don't believe the whaling is scientific, i believe it is sustainable as all current figures employed by biologists (rather than green peace propaganda ministers (Brad: Who are these people?) suggest.

Brad says:
I suppose this is from the same people who said the Canadian cod fishery was sustainable. You really don't have to look far to find endless evidence not only that whales are being over exploited unsustainably, but also countless other species. Read more here.

Hayden says:
As for calling me a whale hater i am not i love all animals in the environment (Brad: This is a logical fallacy unless you can still love something that you think is okay to exploit), i just wish Greenpeace would help the ones that really need it (such as those in the amazon jungle) rather than those that are 'cool' to protect, as up until 18 months ago you used to agree with me.

Brad says:
I have never ever stated that hunting whales is good. I agree there are many other worthy creatures and habitats that deserve attention from Greenpeace. Perhaps you could join up and donate some money so that they have the resources to do this...).

Hayden:
I challenge you to put this email on your blog (Brad: done), because the level of immaturity shown by you by claiming to have won an argument when the other person does not have right of reply is beyond a joke - i guess you'd fit right at home in Greenpeace, please research your 'facts' in future before claiming to have won.

Brad:
I think it is reasonably clear who has the right 'facts' in this case.

Hayden:
And to call the G20 protesters a bunch of kids for doing what they believed was right, is quite hilarious, considering Greenpeace is a group of uneducated people with no scientific background performing violent acts, sounds pretty similar to me.

Brad says:
I am not sure what your definition of uneducated is, but certainly much of Greenpeace's strongest support and membership comes from students at universities.

Hayden:
I would also like to draw your attention to your initial reply to my email:
About the violent protest, you make a good point, although in the case of the G20 protests it was more a case of violence for violence's sake – whereas with Greenpeace they are taking action against an activity that although not completely illegal, is widely condemned by most of the western world.

You said i make a good point you seem to have changed your tune now.

Brad:
In this quote I was referring to the fact that I think violent protest is wrong, which is definitely not something that Greenpeace encourages or partakes in.

Hayden:
I guess you'll be supporting the Green parties idea to stop all mining in Australia, therefore bankrupting the country over night next wouldn't suprise me considering you supported a group of people who should all have been convicted of attempted murder.

Brad:
Hmmm, not sure what this has to do with Greenpeace (separate from the Green party, of which you will be aware I am not a political supporter of).

Okay I think that about does it for this debate. This will likely be my last post on the issue for a while.

Meet Rupert

Okay I know I promised some photos of the run to the G, well I forgot to take my camera, so I am posting a picture of my new friend "Rupert" who accompanied me on Sunday for the last 14 kms.


The pain during the race wasn't the usual blister pain and I was convinced I had actually done something more serious. I have good advice that you aren't supposed to pop them, so I'll see how long I can resist the temptation.

8 seconds better!

Well the official results for the run to the G are out and I actually came in 8 secs faster officially at 1:34:25. Placed 192 overall and 177 by gender out of 1308 - I'm happy!

1:34:33

Okay it wasn't a PB but I'm happy. Here come the excuses....No not really, although I think it was definitely a harder course than Wellington with several challenging (especially on the second lap) rises. I won't call them hills because they weren't really but you sure as hell felt them. The good news is that the right foot held up remarkably well, so well in fact that I didn't even feel it. On the other hand my left foot started giving me grief from about the 8 km mark. At this stage I was cursing myself for running in the race thinking I had done myself another injury. As it turned out, it was just a nasty blister much to my relief.

A few of the guys with GPS watches reckon the course was slightly too long, about 300-400 metres or so, so take another two minutes off my time there - well that might be streching it. So now I know where I am at I can reassess my goal for the Melbourne half. I think a PB is not out of the question here. In fact I will disappointed with anything less.

Oh yeah, thought I would take the opportunity to show off my new toy, the Polar RS800SD. Here is a screenshot of my race today. My pace was fairly steady (blue line) until about 3km out where I started to struggle a bit. You can also see a steady progressive increase of my heart rate (red line) from about the half way point. Interesting you say, very interesting.

Tomorrow is the day

Tomorrow almost exactly one year after my first one, at the heinously early time of 7:15am I will take off in what will be my second half marathon race. When I did my first one at this time last year I did not think it would be a year until I would do another one. Nevertheless I plan to make up for lost time this year as I want to do at least six including tomorrow over the next year. After that I think I will feel ready to take on the ultimate goal of the Marathon, which going to plan may well be Melbourne 2008. Although a part of me would really like to do a famous overseas marathon as my first (London, New York, Paris maybe?). The big question for me at the moment is how will the foot hold up. I have seriously considered pulling out of the race over the past week or so given the lack of great improvement in the injury. However, I am confident I will last the distance having run 15 km on it last weekend and then really testing it at pace over a 1 km time trial during the week. It will be more of a matter of how much pain will it give me and how will it effect my form and my time. I will let you know tomorrow.

I realised the other day that the hordes of people who are regularly reading this blog have probably noticed the lack of photos lately. It's funny it hasn't been a conscious thing it just has happened that I haven't picked up the camera since Easter! Anyway, I've promised myself to take some random photos before and after the race tomorrow. I actually intended to take some photos at the party we went to last night but it has been so long since I used the camera that all my rechargeable batteries had gone flat!

Got into an aggravated discussion with my bro on Thursday night of which the end result was him hanging up on me. He has an issue with how I can slag off the G20 protesters for using violence on one hand and on the other condone the violent attacks by Greenpeace on the Japanese whaling boats. Despite the fact that he is clearly a whale hater, to me the difference between these two acts is fundamental. The G20 protesters were a bunch of kids, who anyone standing on the sidelines of the protest could clearly see were just out to create trouble and violence for the sake of it. It wasn't even clear what they were protesting at - the fact that they were too cowardly to even show their face, hiding behind costumes etc says a lot in my mind. They trashed the inner city area of Melbourne, destroyed a police car and terrorised inner city residents, what was the protest about again? Read more here.

Okay this brings me to the whales. Japan is conducted 'scientific' research by systematically hunting and killing whales in the Southern Ocean. Even if you truly believe any of this is for scientific research, this is not really the point. Greenpeace was peacefully protesting the hunting of these whales, when the Japanese mothership, the Nissin Maru, deliberately rammed the Greenpeace ship. Read more here. The Japanese then claimed Greenpeace was at fault! Lets also remember that the Nissin Maru is six times larger than the Artic Sunrise, the Greenpeace vessel it rammed. Are there any similaraties between the G20 protests and the whale hunts in the Southern Ocean? Well yes, unprovoked violence was used by the G20 protestors, and unprovoked violence was used by the Japanese. Case closed.

Injured...again

Well a few things to talk about in this post as somehow two weeks have slipped by since I last posted. Firstly, although the heading of the posts says that I am injured, which I sort of still am, I am mostly recovered now. It was a strange right foot injury that occurred not during my Saturday long run on the 2nd but about four hours after. I was just walking around the kitchen at home and I felt a strange mild twang/pain in the heel of my right foot. It was then quite painful to walk on and there was no hope of me running on it. I of course was naturally thinking the worst and getting ready to 'scratch' myself from the run to the G on Sunday. To make things worse my Polar running computer arrived from overseas on the Tuesday and after waiting very patiently for it to arrive I couldn't even use it when it arrived. All this meant that I was angry and depressed for about three days last week but thankfully the injury has steadily improved and I went running with my new watch on Saturday and it is everything I hoped for - although I still need to refine the distance calibration a little as it measured about 4km on a 3.8km circuit and naturally was telling me that I'm running a little faster than I actually am - which wasn't all that bad for my ego :-). I can still feel the injury a little but I am sure that it will be 100% by the time Sunday comes around and I will be jumping out of my skin looking for that PB. So there it is, I have finally announced it. This will be my second half marathon, in my inaugural one in Wellington last year I scraped under my goal time of 1hr30 with a 1:29:48 having blown up slightly in the last couple of kms.

I will be extremely happy if I can beat that time this year, as I'm sure I was fitter, less injured and more motivated to run a time last year...here come the excuses, Wellington is a lightning fast course (in good weather which we had last year), whereas this course on Sunday is a bit more up and down with a few gentle rises and falls that I reckon make it at least a two minute slower course over the distance. However, my running computer has also predicted that I can run a sub 1hr30m based on my current fitness, so provided I give it my all, that PB is possible. Even if I don't get it, it will be useful for me to see where I am at. The real goal race this year is the Melbourne half marathon in October for which 1hr25min must be the target.

Now for the wait

I'm quite an impatient person at times, although quite contradictorily many people who know me well say I am very patient. I think it really depends on the context. Here is an example - I decided I really really really wanted a heart rate + speed and distance monitor watch and I wanted it yesterday. However, I had the patience, some might call it common sense, to do the research and make sure I bought the watch that was right for me. Yes, yesterday I offed some of my hard earned cash (and Asia's too :) ) and bought the Polar RS800SD HRM and now I have to wait a week and a half for it to arrive from the states - arggghh frustration and impatience. I just want to go running with it. I know I have said it already but I really can't believe how much better I feel since I have started running again - it's great to have a positive goal outside of work and something else to focus on. I really can't believe I stopped after the half marathon last year but I had good reasons - major life changes, moving to Germany then settling in Australia among other things. Although a wise man once said don't change too many things too fast and maybe I did by stopping running although I have finally corrected the error now. I think one of the reasons why I am enjoying it so much at the moment is the training group I have joined. It's great to be able to run with other runnners!

19km training run, are you kidding me?

Yes that's right 19 km. As part of my new resolution to get back into running again I have joined a training group that is preparing for the 'Run to the G' half marathon on June 17. I went along for my first session on Saturday, realising that I was coming in about half way through the build up, but still thinking okay they will probably only be running just over an hour maybe 13-14 km, easy. So when I was still going reasonably strong and we finished after one hour and 37 minutes having run 19km I was feeling quite surprised. Although, every runner knows that the cardinal sin of running is to run too far too soon - as I found out with what seems to be my first ever running injury. I have had a sore knee for most of the week and until yesterday it was extremely uncomfortable to put weight on. Thinking I could run it off, I went for another group run yesterday, only 11 km. It was feeling pretty ginger throughout but I made it and after icing it last night it feels a lot better today. I think it is probably nothing serious though, just a bit of inflammation. I will keep you posted.

Being an electrical engineer I am slightly obsessed with gadgets, although not as much as you might think, but when I discovered people in my running group wearing these and these I instantly wanted one and I wanted it yesterday. However, now I am faced with a dilemma. Having made the decision to buy one, I can not decide which - the Garmin 305 has GPS and is as ugly as sin, while the Polar RS800SD has a pedometer (less accurate than GPS but works better in poor GPS coverage areas) and looks f..in fantastic. Plus the Polar has an altimeter, brilliant bundled software - lets face I really want the Polar and I would get it if the price difference wasn't so massive. I can get both cheap, relative to local retail from overseas vendors, but even then the price difference between the two models is about $200, ah dilemmas, dilemmas...

Train 1 Brad 0

63 minutes ish was my final time, I was hoping for under one hour but in the end I think I can be reasonably satisfied. I mean, considering my current level of running fitness it went pretty much as expected. A little disappointing though as the train was a bit slow this year, clocking in at just under 58 minutes, so only five minutes faster and I could have beaten it. My team all finished within four minutes of each despite none of us actually running together. It was a tough race to run though as there were over 3000 entrants which made the run into a 'walk' for about the first 500 metres and then it was pretty slow weaving in and out of people for most of the first half of the race. In fact, I was in a pretty big crowd for most of the run and never really felt like I got a proper rhythm going. In all, it was a pretty new experience for me running with that many people.

Train-Day minus 1

The big train race is tomorrow morning at 9:30am, starting at Belgrave railway station. I got my number in the post this week, 1397 seems decent and no special astrological significance I think...

My preparation leading up to the race has been okay but not great. I have had in total probably no more than half a dozen runs in the past few weeks. However, I still have a reasonable base level of aerobic fitness from biking to work everyday. I went for a good run in the Port Hills in Christchurch last weekend - the infamous Harry Ell track, well it's not really that infamous but a good hill run nonetheless. I also ran a couple of laps of 'The Tan' during the week, which is Melbourne's famous running track around the botanic gardens. I will post again tomorrow if I'm not too buggered after the run.

In other news, I've been toying with the idea of setting up my own website - I mean not just a lame blog but a website with actual content of my choosing that I can update regularly. I have been developing a few pages off-line recently and the site as a framework is starting to come together. Watch this space because it's likely I will transfer this blog there too once it's up and going.

Eating up the Turf

It's great to be running again. Sometimes you really don't appreciate how much you enjoy something until you stop, then start again. It's true what they say, if you run (exercise) alot, you really do have more energy and feel better - well at least when you don't have sore muscles from the workout. Of course, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure that one out , do you? I went for a 13.2 km run yesterday with a mate. It was the actual course we will be running in two weeks time against the train. Overall, we found it pretty good, not too steep but just enough to be testing. It is a very beautiful area of Melbourne, lots of gum trees, valleys and rolling hills.

I'm back in NZ on Wednesday evening for work. I'm giving a two day workshop in Wellington and then I'm travelling down to CHCH for the weekend to catch up with the folks. I will send some emails out over the next few days so that I can try and catch up with as many people as possible. Although I am travelling for work, so it might be a busy few days.

Running again

It's funny, I had this really great and interesting idea for a blog post the other day when I was riding to work but now I've completely forgotten what I was going to say - it can't have been as interesting as I thought... Anyway, I have decided to get back into running again. Mostly because since I did the Wellington half marathon in June last year I haven't really been doing much exercise, well I've been biking to work but that has been about it. What really spurred me on to start again is the Puffing Billy race the train race coming up at the start of May. It's 13.2 km through winding up and down bush and to beat the train you have to run around 53 mins. At 4 min/km I think this would have been a pretty tall order for me, even when I was really fit last year. Anyway, I'm going to train hard for the next three weeks and give it a good crack. It should be a fun race whatever the outcome. What I missed most about running was the races. I really enjoy the competitive aspect of them, especially when there is a good sized field, you can always push yourself just that little bit harder to overtake the person in front of you.

Well I got a puncture on my rear bike tyre on the way to work yesterday and I still haven't fixed it. I better go do it now...