Lately I’ve been averaging 4 times a week, but most articles and journals will recommend programs that involve 6-7 times per week, even for absolute beginners. This is what makes me feel old and out of shape, as well as somewhat of a slacker. I don’t think I’m capable of running more than 4-5 times a week without intense shin and joint pain (thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster I have a loving wife to give me foot rubs). Perhaps I don’t put enough into my stretching or warm-ups/cool-downs. I remain confused, because I have been running pretty regularly for the last 3 years.

Anyway, I read an article this week that warmed my spirits about not running every day, and at the same time made me want to take my runs more seriously. Multi-sport coach, Neil Cook, posted a piece called Run Three Times A Week, the thesis of which is that there are “three key workouts that every runner should do each week. These are essential, must-do workouts. All of your other runs are optional.” Cook, of course, goes into a little more detail about each of these workouts, these being intervals, strength/hills, and long runs. He also includes tempo runs as being an optional fourth for those who feel they have to do more. According to Cook, “you can create a training plan that includes only your three weekly key workout and no other running” without any performance loss in your training plans.

I’m hoping this is the case, because I really need to start training for a 250-mile biking adventure coming up at the end of May with my father and brothers. Since my longest ride was about 42 miles, I can say that I’m a bit apprehensive about it. 100 miles per day is the plan, so it’s time to get serious!

(Image from Pharyngula)

Charles Darwin‘s life and work have contributed in innumerable ways to science and human understanding. It still amazes me that so many people still believe that evolution is a false notion, especially in well-developed nations where people are privileged with education. Evolution has proven itself time and time again, and is the only working scientific theory that can explain how life on earth could be here as it is today, and it does so with lucid accuracy. The world of science accepted it as a fact a long time ago. It’s about as questionable as the theory of the earth rotating around the sun.

Coming from a Latter Day Saint (Mormon) background, it’s frustrating to see so many members act as if they value science (many do so exhaustively), but then brush off evolution as if it was just some separate and mistaken idea. While the leadership of the church has not taken an official stance, they have continued to this day to support and repeat previous positions, which claim that it is nothing more than the “theories of men” (See Mormonism and Evolution). Many church authorities today simply dodge the question, like the late Gordon B. Hinckley, who said “People ask me every now and again if I believe in evolution. I tell them I am not concerned with organic evolution. I do not worry about it. I passed through that argument long ago.”

I’m sorry, but if you don’t accept evolution by now, you are either willingly ignorant, or you don’t understand what science is, or how it functions. You might as well believe that the world is flat, or that babies come from storks. Evolution is not a controversy like Ray Comfort, Kirk Cameron, Glen Beck, or Ben Stein would have you believe. To get a hint of the ridiculous lengths you would have to go in order to say otherwise, watch Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. Apart from giving us no information of an alternative theory (supposedly this would be Intelligent Design, but this theory isn’t even a theory because it gives science nothing to test), this film uses every form of rhetorical trickery and fallacious logic known to human kind, including but not limited to appeal to emotion, appeal to ignorance, guilt by association, etc. My wife and I literally laughed our way through it.

If you still aren’t sure about evolution, there is a lot of information out there. Just read. Read online articles like Wikipedia’s, or read from scientific journals. Richard Dawkins recently published a book, The Greatest Show On Earth, that focuses on the mass amount of evidence that exists, a short video introduction of which I include below.

I’m not sure how many releases back this started, but Ubuntu has apparently been offering an installation choice that allows you to skip out on partitioning your hard drive. Ubuntu can be installed and uninstalled like any other application in Windows. This is done through using an installer called Wubi, and is amazingly easy and hassle-free to set up. Once installed, you simply reboot and then you can choose which operating system to boot into, Windows or Ubuntu.

My problem with this so far has been that any time I install the initial group of updates for Ubuntu, I completely loose everything after I reboot. Either the grub menu doesn’t exist anymore, or it can’t find the right location of the kernel. The first time I installed through Wubi, it automatically used the latest 64-bit version of Karmic (9.10), which worked fine after the updates, but ultimately had some intolerable bugs and conflicts with software I use. Normally I just use the live cd to fix booting issues, but that won’t work in this case.

Hopefully I can find a solution to this soon, because I consider this installation method, if working, to be one of the coolest things I’ve found this year to date.

*UPDATE: It turns out, fourth time’s a charm. I installed the 32 bit version and successfully updated all packages on my fourth try. I installed restricted drivers, used it for a day, then installed all the updates as soon as the update manager popped up. After reboot, my grub menu and everything was still there. Victory.

Call of Pripyat, the third release in the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series has finally been released in the US. I’ve been impatiently anticipating this release for a long time. The first two in the series, Shadow of Chernobyl and Clear Sky, while requiring more costly PC hardware, have made a huge fan out of me.

The S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series, if you haven’t played it, is a survival first-person shooter experience that takes place in the exclusion zone which was created by horrific Nuclear Power Plant explosions in and around Chernobyl, Ukraine. What really stood out and sucked me into this game, apart from its plot, was its realism and vivid atmosphere. While playing, you feel like a vulnerable human who runs into trouble with jammed guns, bleeding wounds, and energy-draining hunger. The length of time you can run will depend on how much weight you have in your backpack–which is filled with your weapons, ammunition, food, medication, bandages, and artifacts (highly valuable radioactive rocks that you can either use for their physics-defying properties or sell for large sums of money). All of this is before we get into the affects of radiation, anomalies, and numerous other dangers that reside in the zone’s environment. In order to survive you will also need to loot various buildings, stashes, and yes, even corpses. Advice to first-timers: learn the keyboard shortcuts (especially for quick-saving), otherwise you will die … very often.

The player will also interact with many NPC characters who belong to various waring factions in the zone, and who also exhibit impressive AI capabilities. In the second installment, the prologue Clear Sky, it becomes possible to join these factions and carry out faction-specific missions and objectives. For the most part, it is an open-world game where you can find much to do and explore without following the story’s main objectives. I found this non-linear approach very refreshing. However, I would be remiss if I were to avoid mentioning the unique and humorous bugs that have plagued these games. Patches have fixed many issues, but be forewarned, you will see glitches and oddities on occasion. Without patches, these games have been notoriously so plagued with bugs, that it becomes difficult or even impossible to accomplish tasks and missions. Call of Pripyat has been rumored not to have this problem.

A copy of Call of Pripyat is currently heading west in a UPS truck, and is due to be delivered to my house in a couple days. I will update you with a fresh review once I’ve had sufficient time to play it.