Runner #367

Thursday, 03 November 2011

Today I hosted yet another episode of Atheist Talk. Like the last time (way back in July), my guest was again my friend Ryan.

In part one of the show, guest Ryan provided an overview of the popular fantasy series Discworld, by British author Terry Pratchett. Ryan explained that in the Discworld universe, all the teachings of religions are real, leading to absurdities and difficulties on a scale most theists never consider. Ryan noted that it is Pratchett’s atheism that allows him to skewer and critique religious myths so artistically. Ryan recently represented Minnesota Atheists at the Discworld Convention in Madison, Wisconsin, where he delivered a presentation on the belief structures of Discworld and how this relates to our culture, so much of the material he discussed in this show was culled from that presentation.

Part two was originally slated to be a discussion of Jake Farr-Wharton’s book Letters to Christian Leaders, for which Ryan wrote a review . However, Ryan found the book so crass and poorly written that he instead used the book as an example of how not to  critique religious beliefs. Ryan’s review is hilarious – it’s almost (~99%) entirely negative. I’ll post a link to it once it appears online.

Friday, 04 November 2011

Today my company sponsored their yearly 6K event. I am always amazed at the fact that the first Friday in November always has great weather. Holding an outdoor event in early November seems like a risky endeavor here in Minnesota, but my employer lucks out every time (or maybe they have control over meteorological events; I don’t know).

With stop watch in tow, I positioned myself towards the front of the pack this year. I purposely waited behind the people wearing Boston Marathon shirts, while at the same time ensuring that I was far ahead of the people in blue jeans.

Once the signal was given to go, I began running and pressed the button on my stop watch. Stupidly, the watch was not set to the correct function, so I spent several seconds attempting to rectify the matter. Finally I got it working right, but then I spent the rest of the race knowing that the time was not accurate. As you may recall, last year I achieved my best time by about 80 seconds. After running about 75% of the way, I had to slow down and walk for a while. Last year, I ran for a longer fraction of the race, so I knew this would mean I would not achieve my best score, but at the moment, I was in so much pain that I had to slow up a bit. Then I did some mental calculations and realized that if I picked up the pace a little, I still might beat my time. I ran some more, then walked, then ran, then walked. Coming around the final corner, I estimated (recall that my stopwatch was not dead-on) that I still had three minutes left to make my best time. Without sprinting, I nonetheless trotted along sure and steady and finished with my best time ever. I’m not sure what my exact time was, but I believe I bested last year’s effort by a minute. Beating last year’s time was an unexpected occurrence; beating it by so much was completely surprising. Evidently, I just keep getting faster and stronger each year. By 2025, I will probably be winning this thing.