Books - The Assault of Reason

In the reading department this has been a good summer for me. I started off by discovering the author, CJ Box. After reading his most recent book I got hooked and borrowed all his other books from the library and read them. I next discovered Barry Eisler's John Rain series of books. I bought his most recent books and again borrowed all of his other books from the library. For both of these authors, I could start reading one of there books and have it finished a couple of days later. George Tenet's book, "At the Center of the Storm" is a book that is taking longer to read that I would have thought. I read a chapter and then think and reflect on what he says about his days working for the CIA. Last night, I finished my favorite book of the summer, Al Gore's, "The Assault of Reason." This is a book that I'll most likely read a more couple of times in the future. I'll quote from the inside jacket of the book, "A visionary analysis of how the politics of fear, secrecy, cronyism and blind faith has combined with the degradation of the public sphere to create an environment dangerously hostile to reason."

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

On Friday, at the stroke of midnight I and a lot of other Harry Potter fans will have there chance to read the final Harry Potter book, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.” Once again, I’ll stay up until midnight and go to the bookstore and watch the clock move ever close to the magic hour. The bookstore has WiFi so I can surf and try to score a couple of more babble points while waiting for the book to become available. At that point, I will constrain myself to read only a couple of pages per sitting as I fear that if I don’t, the book will be read over the course of the weekend. There are already leaked copies of the book available for viewing on the web. Did I take a look? Yes, I only looked at the table of contents which doesn’t reveal much. I’m comfortable waiting to until Friday midnight to experience the final book as what is a couple of extra days after waiting a couple of years.

I hate Urtica dioica...

While geocaching yesterday I ran into some urtica dioca. It is weed that I don't like interacting with as it always leaves me itching. Urtica dioca is commonly known as stinging nettle. My aversion to stinging nettles is sort of like Jason's to poison ivy. The cache was 40 yards away and the only way to get it was through a patch of stinging nettle. My first brush with the nettles was not fun. I jumped into a stream up to my knees and washed away the irritant. I wasn't too concerned about the water quality of the stream. I jumped up on shore and through another patch and found the cache nearby. It was back again into the stream to wash my legs again. Once home I washed my legs with Hibiclens and then with betadine. I thought I had nipped the problem in the bud. A couple of hours later I tried hand sanitizer with a moisturizer. In the wee hours of the morning I tried a 3M skin cream. I stopped by the drug store this morning on the way to the office and found relief and it felt good. It came in the form of polysporin. I coated my legs in the stuff and felt normal again. Ever couple of hours I would lather on some more of the cream. The cream is yucky as it sort of like wearing dried glue on your legs but it is given me relief. Next time I see a geocache surrounded by stinging nettles I may take a pass until I'm wearing pants.

Death Package

This morning I did a 5km road race in the borough of the city that I live. The community paper had been advertising the race for the past month. The race went through the local street and the course was in the shape of a dogbone. A couple of my friends at the Running Room were on the start line with me. The race went well and I finished in a time just over 20 minutes which is good for me as it is the shortest distance that I have raced this year. As well, the race gave a chance to break in my new pair of sneakers. The race draw prize was one of the more interesting parts of the race. The first draw prize was a death package. At first thought it sounds rather bad. A local road race promoting death. One of the sponsors was a local law firm and they were offering powers of attorney and wills for a couple which was sort of neat.

Geocaching adventure...

Yesterday, I did my first research session in 30C/86F conditions. The training sessions are four hours long and once outfitted you feel like a test pilot as you have a variety of sensors inside and outside your body, all measuring how you are reacting to the heat. In a future post, I will describe in detail what happened and will happen at my two sessions next week. The next sessions will be at 95F and 104F. It is fun training in the heat but the only bummer is that you don't get a tan.

While geocaching yesterday, I made a data entry error that put me on the wrong side of the Ottawa River, on the north, Quebec side. When I got to the apparent cache site all I could see is a large patch of poison ivy. Would a geocacher put a cache in the middle of a patch of poison ivy. I double checked my coordinates and had entered 24 rather than 23. The correct coordinates put me back on the south, Ontario, side of the Ottawa River. The cache was a little nasty as they had magnetically attached the first waypoint inside a metal culvert leading underneath a sidewalk. You had to reach elbow deep inside the pipe to fetch the metal canister to get the next set of coordinates. The final cache was hidden inside an old willow tree that was apparently surrounded by poison ivy but I think that the folks at the cache before me didn't know what PI looks like. While leaving the cache I spotted a red fox which was cool. It looked like a super sized cat and was on the prowl for dinner.

VO2 test – cycling

Later this week we will start the formal part of the research. Today, we did a VO2 max test on bicycle to gauge my physical fitness. They were pleased last week by my low resting heart rate (42). The setup for test is, you wear a heart rate monitor on your chest, have a nose clips on your nose and breath through a tube hocked up to a machine providing air that analysis your oxygen to carbon dioxide concentration. It also measure things like the number of breaths per minute and a boat load of other measures. Once you are hooked up to the gear you start cycling for two minutes at a certain resistance (measured in watts) and then they increase the resistance by 40 watts. Each stage is two minutes long and the resistance is raised by 40 watts. The starting resistance was 40 watts. I was able to hold on for six stages before I shut down. My calfs and quads were burning by this point. The researchers decided to stop it as I was ready to go to the next stage. In the end, I have a VO2 rating of 50 which is a little lower than my running VO2 which means that I am in good shape.

Research July 2007 - 1

A little while back I heard through a friend that the UOttawa Human Kinetics department was seeking fit individuals for research projects. I have participated in two research projects in the past and so was eager to do another one. The research project involves measuring a person's body-thermal response when working in hotter and hotter conditions. The formal part of the research involves cycling for a fixed period of time under progressive hotter conditions while hooked up to a variety of internal and external measuring devices. Today, I was suppose to do a VO2 test but postponed it a couple of days to allow my legs to recover from the hiking. Instead, we measured my height, weight, blood pressure (normal), heart rate (low) and got wet. The getting wet part is cool as I had done this a couple of times, it is not what you think. The goal was to figure out what was my percent body fat. There are a couple of way of measuring body fat. The most common and least accurate is using skin fold method. The technique which gives a better estimate is known as hydrostatic weighting. The gold standard is something called the DEXA scan. In the past, I have done all three tests. For the current project, we did the hydrostatic weighting which involves getting into a tank of water and sweeping the bubbles off your body. The next part is to sit on a platform under water and blow out all the air from your lungs. You sit on the platform for a couple of seconds and they measure your in-the-water weight. We did a couple of hydrostatic measuring sessions until we got similar results. Early next week, we will do the VO2 test on a bicycle and then later in the week, we will do the first test session. Each test sessions will be under hotter conditions. Most of the protocols that we will use are things I have done in the past so much of it is familiar which is great. In future entries, I'll describe what happens at various sessions.