I ran six miles this morning. The first mile, I had a strong gait. By the end of the second mile, I was starting to get winded. By the two and half mile mark, the pain set in. At mile three, I got a second wind, kind of, sort of. By mile four, the second wind went away and my gait was barely a hair past a trudge. By mile five the only reason I kept going was that it was so cold out and I was running in shorts and two shirts. If I had walked backed to the house, my sweat would have froze to my skin. At five and half miles, I tried to pick up the pace and get back into a real running stride. This effort last about twenty steps. At six miles, I stopped. The cold had shrunk my testes to the size of schoolyard marbles (and not the shooters). I was wore out. Time for food, drugs (aspirin and acetaminophen), and a hot bath. Now that its over, I actually feel pretty good. I feel far better than 3 weeks ago when I first ran over 5 miles.

So the HFC isn't a complete failure. I surpassed my goal of being able to run five miles. On the other hand, I haven't lost any weight. Worse, I've confirmed that the new scale is accurate. (Well, at least if it isn't accurate at fifty pounds, its inaccurate to the same extent as the company that packed the fifty pound bag of rock salt I bought a few weeks ago.) This means that rather than clocking in (and out) at 178 or so, I'm clocking in at 186. Fiddlesticks! Dagnabbit! I'm fatter than I thought.

Google analytics is fun. Since I set up an account on blogspot, people at IP addresses from over 40 different countries have visited my (rather lame) blog. The only continent not represented is Antarctica. It's also interesting to see the referring sites and the search terms used to find the page. How many other sites pop up relatively high on the list for searches like `Bruno Marx material basis' and `Jewish transsexuality' and `David Bosco'. The other interesting thing is the amount of time spent there. Folks here in the US tend to spend a minute or less reading the site. The one person from Singapore, who spent 20 minutes on the site, seems to have actually read all four articles.

Note to Hulver: it sure would rock out if we could embed out own Google tracker here at HuSi.

At this point I've done all that I can do with grad school apps. Now I need wait on responses. Waiting sure does stink.

I caught two bad movies last night. The second isn't even worth mentioning. The first was Romero's Land of the Dead. I've seen three of the four Romero zombie movies. (Note, there are actually five if you count Night of the Living Dead twice due to the 1989 remake.)  Night of the Living Dead was an incredible study of human nature. Dawn of the Dead was less so, but still very insightful. By Day of the Dead (the one I've not yet seen) Romero seems to have gotten to full of himself. His themes aren't particularly interesting anymore and by Land of the Dead, the quality of the writing is what you might expect of a Sci-Fi channel original. I wasn't particularly impressed.

I should write a bit about this. I don't know if I'll make the time to, though. I think both Irwin and Iqbal fail to comprehend the impact of philosophy on science. The leaps in the study of science during and after the Enlightenment were largely driven by men who are now considered philosophers (Pascal, Bacon, Descartes, Newton, etc.). It seems to me that the triumph of al-Ghazali’s philosophical occasionalism does have quite a bit to do with the view of the sciences in most (not all predominantly) Islamic countries. Scientific American (I think, it may have been Discover) did a series of interviews with Muslim scientists from around the world. The specter of Ghazali hung heavy over the thinking of the scientists from a fair number of Islamic countries. Of course, this doesn't mean that all of Islam is shaped by this, just as it is true that not all of Christendom was shaped by the Reformation, but I do think it fair to say that most of Islam is shaped by this.