Sunday, February 20, 2011

The violence you can stop, you must stop.

I was having a little debate on Youtube about Stef's reading of deMause's The Origins of War in Child Abuse (which can be found here as well as here).

That has led me to believe that it's about time I put my thoughts on morality down in writing. I accept Stefan Molyneux's arguments in Universally Preferable Behavior: a Rational Proof of Secular Ethics. On page 53 of the PDF, he starts his proof of the validity of the Non-Aggression Principle.

Hmm. I'm going to have to look closer look. I've just fried my brain doing a scan of the entire book.

Anyway, the thought I had when I wrote the title of this post was that it does fit the UPB format, except that it's unenforceable. Because we can't know the capacities of an individual we would enforce it on. That removes it to the level of an Aesthetically Positive Action. People like it when you do it, but they may not use force to force you to do it.

Saturday, February 05, 2011

Bundling up for winter runs

The temperature went from 18°-22°F while I was running today, and I'd have to say that I was relatively comfortable. No doubt spandex, or whatever those tights are made of, works better than the cheap stuff I wear, but I'm not here to help rich people. Except maybe to preserve their wealth by not squandering it on unnecessary stuff. I mean, I don't think I'd look good in that anyway.

Today, I took the risk of skipping the long johns and the undershirt; I only wore one pair of socks (but that's been plenty - I haven't run in temperatures colder than 10 below, ignoring windchill). I was OK with just sweat pants and two layers of polar fleece jackets on my upper body - one with a hood. And my Twins ballcap. I just wore my TC 1-Mile technical shirt under the jackets.

Oh, I also wore a safety vest for visibility. It was foggy out when I started. And my little knit gloves. They work just fine once you're warmed up. Keep your hands in your pockets for the first couple miles.

If there'd been any wind, I would definitely have needed the long-johns and undershirt. As it was, my shirt got completely soaked with sweat and apparently my jackets were flopping around enough on the bottom, where the vest wasn't holding them in place, to fan cold air in and darn near freeze the sweat. When I showered my belly was red and the hot water stung it.

Other things I should mention before I forget: I ran 16 miles in 3:15. The 16 was planned, the 3:15 was surprisingly slow, but I suppose that was due to the fact that there were a lot of slippery patches, and I prefer to run on a layer of snow rather than frozen asphalt and concrete. Or ice.

I slathered my feet with Glide and duct-taped my nipples. Technical shirts are rough on those (the latter, not the former). I used inch-square pieces today as an experiment and they worked like a champ. I've tried ¼ inch squares and ½ inch squares, but they haven't lasted for a whole long run. I can't get these off even now. Oh, well. My wife's the only one who'll have to deal with them. Pretty sure I'll be rid of them by Tuesday.