Monday, 05 May 2003

I played around a bit with a new story idea today. Don't know if it'll turn into anything. Something to do with reversing expectation--where the ugly characters turn out to be the ones who aren't evil. It's been done before, but maybe I have a slightly different twist on the idea.

Happy Cinco de Mayo! This makes the second year in a row that Jackie and I cleverly realized what day it was and didn't carelessly wander into our local Mexican restaurant for dinner and then wonder why it was so crowded. We had leftover pizza instead.

I went out for a run this morning before work. About the same as two days ago.

It's interesting about running and lifting--the exercise doesn't make you stronger. It makes you weaker. (Prove this to yourself: Go out and run fast for as long as you can. Then lift a weight so heavy that you can barely lift it ten times. Now repeat the same exercises. Bet you don't run as far or lift as much.) It's the rest after the exercise that makes you stronger.

That's not a unique insight of course. Everyone knows that. But whereas everyone has an intuitive grasp that just resting makes you weaker, the same intuition about exercising is harder to come by. Most people in rich countries hardly ever get enough exercise to have first-hand knowledge.