Ok, the latest installment of my fight with fat - to see where it started go here. Well losing weight just got a little harder. One of the problems with being fat and over 40 is that you are also prone to more injuries.
This one was embarrassingly ordinary. I went out for a gentle kick around with a soccer ball with mates at work, overstretched a touch and strained a groin muscle - how dumb. Well now I'm hobbling around like a really old man and have to be careful about staying still too long or it gets used to being in one place and it kills to move.
Still, I've got on the ride and refuse to get off - I can still swim. So I started swimming yesterday.
All in all swimming is a crap exercise for losing weight, at least when you first start. Why? Because to lose weight you need to lift your heart rate and keep it high for some time. When you first start swimming this is virtually impossible as your arms and shoulders will simply run out of power well before your heart is working hard enough. That's whats happening to me. Yesterday I squeezed out 400 meters, and I could only do that as 8x50 meter swims. Today I stretched that to 500 meters, a 100m plus another 8x50 meter swims.
This is killing me emotionally, you see I used to swim competitively as a kid and I wasn't bad. At my best I was swimming around the mid 23 seconds for a 50 freestyle. Today the fastest I could manage was 1 minute 10 seconds. That's nearly 17 seconds slower than I used to do a 100m!
Well, its just another thing that's going to have to change. If you are interested in my progress, have tips or questions feel free to comment.
Showing posts with label age. Show all posts
Showing posts with label age. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Restricting the vote - my theory
I'm 42 years old and everyday I still wake up to find I'm smarter than I was yesterday. I know more, I understand what I know much better, I know my limitations and I have a clue how to work around them. Everyday I look back at work I've done in the past, whether that's 5 years or 5 weeks and think "How did I write that?, How was I so ignorant and simplistic?" Going further I find myself wondering, if I get a little more knowledgeable and a little wiser everyday how dumb was I when I was twenty something?
And this goes to the core of my problem with the idealization of youth and in particular the insane notion of giving people under the age of 18 the vote.
In the main people don't really fully develop their moral sense until their late teens, brain development doesn't stop until their mid to late twenties so why would we actually go out of our way to give people, clearly still in the process of becoming adults the single most important right most of them will ever use, the right to elect a government? In fact I'd like to go further, how about we raise the voting age until something like 21.
Better still how about we throw some other requirements in as well. These would be some of mine:
a. You cant vote until you have a job and earn at least 80% of your disposable income yourself. People with trust funds, inheritances, allowances etc need not apply.
b. You cant vote until you've moved out of home and been responsible from running a household. If you live at home and mummy and daddy take care of you how can you be trusted to have a say in the running of the country.
In addition to controlling who can vote at all, I also think we need to control whose vote counts. This would be pretty simple. On the back of the ballot would be a test with simple questions relating to some of the key issues of the day at the time of the election. So using an example from one of the more shameful parts of Australia's past it could be something like:
Under the UN convention for refugees (to which Australia is a signatory), people seeking asylum are required to stop:
a. at the first country outside their own,
b. at a country in their region,
c. at a country similar in race, religion and/or political system like their own, or
d. only when they feel safe.
or alternatively
Last year the number of asylum seekers arriving at Australia by boat was closest to:
a) 500
b)2500
c)5000
d)20000
Have just (say) four questions and make them absolutely factual with no room for interpretation. Get two wrong and your vote isn't counted. Really this seems pretty obvious, if you simply don't know anything about the key issues of an election why should you get the ability to impose your ignorance on others?
Ok, clearly none of this is going to happen, and on mature reflection I'm not even sure it should but it would be nice to think of a government actually elected by people who had some grasp on reality.
And this goes to the core of my problem with the idealization of youth and in particular the insane notion of giving people under the age of 18 the vote.
In the main people don't really fully develop their moral sense until their late teens, brain development doesn't stop until their mid to late twenties so why would we actually go out of our way to give people, clearly still in the process of becoming adults the single most important right most of them will ever use, the right to elect a government? In fact I'd like to go further, how about we raise the voting age until something like 21.
Better still how about we throw some other requirements in as well. These would be some of mine:
a. You cant vote until you have a job and earn at least 80% of your disposable income yourself. People with trust funds, inheritances, allowances etc need not apply.
b. You cant vote until you've moved out of home and been responsible from running a household. If you live at home and mummy and daddy take care of you how can you be trusted to have a say in the running of the country.
In addition to controlling who can vote at all, I also think we need to control whose vote counts. This would be pretty simple. On the back of the ballot would be a test with simple questions relating to some of the key issues of the day at the time of the election. So using an example from one of the more shameful parts of Australia's past it could be something like:
Under the UN convention for refugees (to which Australia is a signatory), people seeking asylum are required to stop:
a. at the first country outside their own,
b. at a country in their region,
c. at a country similar in race, religion and/or political system like their own, or
d. only when they feel safe.
or alternatively
Last year the number of asylum seekers arriving at Australia by boat was closest to:
a) 500
b)2500
c)5000
d)20000
Have just (say) four questions and make them absolutely factual with no room for interpretation. Get two wrong and your vote isn't counted. Really this seems pretty obvious, if you simply don't know anything about the key issues of an election why should you get the ability to impose your ignorance on others?
Ok, clearly none of this is going to happen, and on mature reflection I'm not even sure it should but it would be nice to think of a government actually elected by people who had some grasp on reality.
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